Apparently, Rudolph is a bit of a prima donna, a quality that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the other reindeer.

That and other secrets are exposed in Buntport Theater’s Donner: A Documentary, helpfully subtitled with “about the reindeer . . . not the Party.” Not a film but a stage play, Donner mocks the conventions of PBS talking-head documentaries as well as presenting a slightly sordid reindeer Behind the Music.

A collaborative company, Buntport consists of six principals who create the shows. Hannah Duggan, Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg and Erin Rollman also perform, while Samantha Schmitz and Matt Petraglia work offstage. For the lead in Donner, Buntport has brought in another talented actor, Muni Kulasinghe, who, even with a blackened nose, lights the path of the show.

We first meet Donner sitting in his low-rent apartment building, communicated by projections on three large screens. Smoking, lisping, a little dorky, Donner is clearly no Santa’s golden boy, and his resentment for Rudolph quickly shines through — why should that reindeer’s deformity lead to fame? “He had a discolored nose. I have a lazy eye,” Donner points out.

The play begins in January of 1999, and takes us through the year up to Christmas (presumably, the “film” spent another year in post-production). We meet those who surround Donner: his flying partner, the rage-filled Blitzen (a very funny Colonna); Santa and his sewer-mouth wife (Edborg and Duggan); Donner’s third-grade teacher, a frosty Junker (Rollman), and the preening, gone Hollywood Rudolph (Edborg). All are hysterical; the only extraneous character is a reindeer expert (Duggan) who reappears delivering bland facts.

Frustrated with his lack of glory, Donner quits North Pole Industries and looks for a new career. He applies for jobs in law firms and at Kinko’s (where Duggan, as the store manager, is entranced by the video crew), but no one wants to hire a guy with antlers. Even a high school won’t hire him as mascot unless he wears their reindeer head.

Scattered throughout this trifle are moments of radiance. Rollman gives her reindeer physical attributes that distinguish them, one pawing the ground nervously, the other jerking her head. Slides of Donner’s baby pictures splash on the screens, hysterical visions of a little boy with a black nose and antlers. Santa makes Donner change his name from the original Donder because “They thought it sounded too ethnic.”

And at the head of it all is Donner, a sad schlump of a deer with an inflated sense of his own destiny.

-Lisa Bornstein, December 7, 2001, Rocky Mountain News