Between Us Theatre Co. brings a grown-ups-only holiday comedy to The Tank this December: Santa's an A**hole, a new play by Emile Lacheny, opens a six-performance world premiere on December 9.
Directed by Aiden Dalton, the world premiere takes The Tank's main stage at 312 West 36th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues. The company bills it plainly as a dark, queer Christmas comedy that is not meant for children, and it comes with content warnings for gun violence, suicide, sexual harassment and strong language.
The play is set on Christmas Eve in the offices of Friend in Need, a nonprofit suicide hotline, where staffers Urch and Jean are expecting a bleak shift. Then Danny, a homeless friend of Jean's, turns up looking for somewhere to hide: he survived a gunshot to the head, and gun lobbyists want him gone. His roommate and lover Jacobo arrives to finish what was started, and a lonely caller named Zaza gets pulled into the chaos too.
Lacheny, whose play E.G.G. won the 2024 BroadwayWorld Award for Best New Play (Off-Off-Broadway), took his starting point from the 1979 French comedy Santa Claus Is a Stinker (Le Père Noël est une ordure) and rebuilt it from the ground up. “Santa's an A**hole was written as a celebration of trans, queer, and neurodivergent characters,” he said. “Comedy felt like the right vehicle because it lowers defenses and lets people lean into ideas they might otherwise resist.”
The cast is Joe Armando Grosso, Cassandra Giovinne, Megan Gwyn, Emile Aslan Lacheny, EJ Paras, Amari Flynn and Micah Price. Costumes are by Pablo Gatto, fight choreography by Annie Kefalas and intimacy coordination by Lisa LaGrande, with Veronica Murphy as stage manager.
Performances are Wednesday, December 9 at 9:30pm; Saturday, December 12 at 7pm; Wednesday, December 16 at 7pm; Thursday, December 17 at 9:30pm; Saturday, December 19 at 3pm; and Sunday, December 20 at 7pm. The running time is 90 minutes, and tickets are $23–$43.
Between Us Theatre Co., co-founded by Lacheny, is a New York nonprofit focused on immigrant and LGBTQ+ stories and has staged more than ten productions at venues including The Tank and The Chain.
For more information, visit The Tank.
