FANTASY FOLLIES: Is this what Santaland is really like? Photo illustration by Portland Stage Company |
This time of year, does typical American holiday entertainment leave you feeling unrepresented, marginalized, and excluded? Does its unflappable faith in earnest icons and commercialism render you Scroogeish, or drive you too often to the eggnog? In that case, perhaps you will, like me, say a blessing for Portland Stage Company's offbeat Studio Series, for offering us a holiday alternative: perverse funnyman David Sedaris, swigging whiskey and smoking butts in Manhattan as a hired elf. The Santaland Diaries, a devilish one-man show, is based on Sedaris's actual observations and humiliations at the beck and call of Macy's in-house Santas. Portland Stage's production features the marvelously impish Dustin Tucker as David, in the PSC directorial debut of Daniel Burson (for four years now, the company's excellent Literary and Education Manager). The wicked, politically incorrect, and highly recommended show is a balm for the Christmas Carol-afflicted.
We meet the broke 33-year-old David in the backstage area of Macy's "Santaland," among the retail rip-rap of sale posters, clothes racks, and lower halves of mannequins (Anita Stewart's raucous set design). There, he narrates his progress as a reluctant applicant, filling out a ten-page multiple-choice personality test, and then becoming a reluctantly employed, twee-ly outfitted elf named (by his own choice) "Crumpet." After completing Elf Training, David/Crumpet meets American Christmas head-on, and the drinking starts soon thereafter.
So does the feverish countdown to the big holiday and the end of David's candy-cane-stockinged gig. The more he sees, the more he's looking forward to that end, and the inimitable Tucker (one of the most versatile young actors regularly appearing on Maine stages) makes hilarious work of David's suffering and snarkiness. Tucker is a remarkably expressive physical actor, and his facial dynamics alone are delicious — contorted sometimes with fierce, impish bitchery, sometimes with louche dissolution, sometimes with loud faux holiday cheer. Watch his corporeal resignation as first puts on his elf duds (designed by Susan Thomas); relish the exaggerated brightness of his grin as he translates the sign language he has been taught in preparation for the deaf contingent of "Operation Special Children:" "You are a beautiful boy! I love you! Do you want a surprise?" (If you discern homoerotic undertones in those phrases, you are not alone.)
The writing Tucker has such fun with is vintage Sedaris — his earliest national success, in fact — and it's as sardonic, outrageous, and offensive as you could hope for (prudes and the politically correct should go see A Christmas Carol on PSC's mainstage instead). But this piece is also a very sharp and thorough bit of social criticism, an ethnographic satire of a particular American insanity: the visit with Santa. As he observes the masses, Sedaris analyzes all kinds of material: wish lists (of both kids and parents); maternal versus paternal behavior (see the dad egging on his son to ask for a large-breasted woman); the role of race and euphemisms (black moms complaining that the one black Santa isn't black enough; white moms asking for a "traditional" Santa); regular people's behavior around celebrities such as Phil Collins and Goldie Hawn; and the different strategies and monstrosities of various Santas (e.g., Santa Carl vs. Santa Doug vs. Santa "Santa").
