Santa is a slumlord. The elves have had it. A short skit for children and young adults about company towns, deferred maintenance, and the man in the red suit who really, really needs to fix the flashing on the north side.
Dramatis Personae
A Note for the Director
The North Pole here is a company town. Think Mitchell–Lama. Think MetLife’s Stuyvesant Town in 1962. Think the kind of place where the same family owns the factory, the housing, the cocoa hall, and the calendar. Santa isn’t a villain; he’s a man who started a small workshop, scaled it to one-point-nine billion units a night, and forgot that “the elves” were also “his neighbors.”
Play him warm. Play him distracted. Play him on a headset. The comedy is in the gap between what he says about himself ( “I deliver joy!”) and what his tenants actually need (a window that closes). Don’t make the elves bitter; make them tired and organized. They have a printout. They know the lease.
Mrs. Claus carries a real wrench. That is not a joke. That is the ending.