Yuletide Blues: The Santaland Diaries  at Long Wharf Theatre

David  Begelman

            The audience filing into Long Wharf’s modest Stage II Theater to see The Santaland Diaries may feel it is being prepped for a routine yuletide show. The house itself is decked out in intimations of America’s favorite holiday. Ushers who courteously show you to your seat wear crimson and white Santa Claus hats, as do the employees at the concession stand and box office in the lobby. Yet even before the talented Thomas Sadoski makes his first appearance on stage in this terrific rendition of David Sedaris’s one man play adapted skillfully by Joe Mantello, you just know something is a bit offbeat about what’s coming. A Christmas tree, situated in front of the proscenium at stage left is drooping toward center stage, as if the patina of holiday cheer had failed to invigorate its sagging spirit.

The tree is, of course, a metaphor for this show, one of the most delightful of the entire Connecticut season. And I mean the season across the state, not just in New Haven’s outstanding area theater. The playhouse is situated a mere stroll down from Brazi’s Restaurant and past a line of empty and—no mistaking it—malodorous meat hauling trucks parked uncomfortably close to the walkway. Navigating past the assault on the senses is well worth the ordeal when it comes to Long Wharf’s current production.    

            The guiding light for this enjoyable escapade is, of course, its author, David Sedaris. He is well known to enthusiasts who listen to his broadcasts on National Public Radio’s series, This American Life. His talents also extend to written works like Holidays on Ice, Naked, Barrel Fever, and his most recent collection of essays, Me Talk Pretty One Day. His body of work has drawn accolades from a large reading audience. Among plays co-authored with his sister, Amy, and produced at Lincoln Center and LaMama in the Big Apple, include Stump the Host, Stitches, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob, The Book of Liz, and One Woman Shoe, which was awarded an Obie   He is a shoe-in for a place among a revered line of other American humorists, from Mark Twain to Woody Allen. He’s that good.  

            Sedaris’s hilarious monologue is currently playing around the country in different playhouses, and is based upon the playwright’s actual experiences of being an “elf” hired by Macy’s for its annual meet Santa ritual for children taking place at its famous midtown department store on 34^th Street. Unemployed actors are familiar with scrounging around for work, some of which, like the elfin gig taken on by the lead character of this monologue (given the disarming sobriquet of “Crumpet”) is more an embarrassment than an uplifting acting assignment. Crumpet’s monologue is a recounting of the experiences he is made to undergo, many of which bring out the darker, more ironic side of his personality.

            Before Mr. Sadoski’s entrance, the stage is set as an enormous green Christmas package tied with a white bow. Familiar ditties of yuletide cheer are piped in, thanks to Daniel Baker’s sound design: Jingle Bells, Let It Snow (as rendered by the incomparable Johnny Mathis), as well as a song by the crooner indispensable to restaurateurs across the country, Frank Sinatra. The performer introduces himself on a relatively bare stage, except for a stool he uses temporarily before opening the set to reveal another: a wintry, but inviting scene of two sloping snow drifts, a blazing fireplace, a rocking chair, and oversized red tree ornaments strewn about on the diminutive snow-filled landscape.

            Before stepping into the wintry scene, Crumpet reveals the elf costume he is required to wear during his stint for Macy’s: red and green striped tights, chartreuse turtle neck, red suspenders, a velvet smock, shoes with turned-up toes, and a funky pointed hat, all of which are designed to avoid misleading a parent or child into believing Crumpet was human. He, of course, refuses to be discriminatory: “Everyone looks retarded—once you set your mind to it.”

Crumpet’s side-splitting misadventures actually begin before he is hired as elf. He tells us he saw the ad for a “full-time elf” in a newspaper. After reporting to Macy’s for the job, he did not take kindly to having to fill out innumerable forms, to take a urine test in order to qualify for a gig that was not only ridiculous but low paying, or to go through endless “elf dress rehearsals.” When costumed, he remarks wryly, “It breaks my heart to see a grown man dressed as a taco,” and he is clearly put off by endless instructions issued by a nameless lady through a corporate sound system. Patience with the outlandish is not one of this character’s outstanding virtues. On the other hand, and as Sedaris invisibly implies, maybe impatience is just the right spyglass through which the outlandish can be perceived in the first place.

While the Sedaris humor always tickles the funny bone in an innocent kind of way, it also smacks of another kind of irony that is Swiftian in tone.  For Crumpet is plainly more than a chap who would just smolder at the inconvenience of it all, end of story. He is the embodiment of all put-upons who must contend with the depredations of a corporate world to which they defer grudgingly—and in many cases, eternally.

When Crumpet alludes to the little boy visiting Santa whose fervent wish is to have his dead father back and a complete set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the remark has poignancy. But this is only because of a child’s inability to tell the difference between the genuine and the trivial—a mistake Crumpet could not make. His is the burden of always knowing the difference between what is real and what is not, while having to accommodate the latter against his best instincts. Actually, history may have beaten us all to the punch in devising Christmas ironies. Few of us realize that St. Nicholas, a.k.a. Santa Claus, was the patron saint of thieves and murderers. How’s that for a Sedaris-like twist on the merry fellow with a twinkle in his eye who goes up and down chimneys?

I have not seen another performer in the role, but I cannot imagine how anyone else could improve on Thomas Sadoski’s performance. He engaged the audience from the beginning, and his elfin character was always a real person whose sense of irony never deteriorated into peevishness. Not a word of his monologue was lost on the audience, and his delivery was, well, superb. The audience belly laughs that greeted his commentary resounded throughout the house too often to recount. His performance received standing ovations.

Kim Rubinstein’s direction was likewise excellent, and for theater goers who fail to appreciate the point, directing monologues can often be a greater challenge than directing full-scale productions, since the possibilities for repetition and monotony of staging are greater in monologues. Jessica Ford’s set design is a triumph of taste and ingenuity, while Olivera Gajic’s costuming seemed totally in accord with a Sedaris conception of the look of things. Josh Epstein’s lighting design brightened The Santaland Diaries considerably.

The playbill indicates David Sedaris lives in both the United States and France. When the Eiffel Tower begins to droop to the left, at least one reviewer promises not to breathe a word to the gendarmes about the identity of the culprit responsible for the sacrilege.

The Santaland Diaries runs at Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II at 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven, from December 4 to December 23, 2007. Tickets may be purchased by calling (203)-787-4282. Website: www.longwharf.org