Christmas cheers

Huzzahs for Gamm’s Santaland and Greetings

December 11, 2007 5:58:52 PM

THAT ELFIN FEELING: Kidd in SantaLand.

When NPR commentator Ira Glass discovered David Sedaris reading his diary in a Chicago club in 1992, he immediately recognized the enormous potential of both Sedaris’s writing and performance. Fifteen years, half-a-dozen books, and three plays later, Sedaris is now sometimes termed “the evil twin of Garrison Keillor.”

That’s because nothing escapes the satiric slash of his pen: human foibles, uncomfortable situations, or the frenzy of an American Christmas. The Gamm Theatre is offering Sedaris’s two distinctly different takes on these topics, The SantaLand Diaries and Season’s Greetings (through December 23). As with many of Sedaris’s essays, The SantaLand Diaries is closely autobiographical; Season’s Greetings, though possibly inspired by moods and crises in his family of six siblings, is definitely not.

Any comic monologue lives or dies on the ability of the performer to infuse the tale with the life of its characters: to become those other people and the protoganist for brief moments before returning to the role of narrator. Both actors — Steve Kidd in SantaLand and Casey Seymour Kim in Greetings — make their narrators seem precise and spontaneous all at once. Both directors — Christopher Francis Byrnes for SantaLand and Wendy Overly for Greetings — are spot-on with their visions of how to vary the pace, modulate the mugging, and let the force of mere words register with the audience.

And register they do. Is it the absurdity of Sedaris’s characterizations or their thread of truth that elicits such uncontrollable eruptions of laughter? Probably both. As a satirist, he not only takes on all manner of politically incorrect topics, but he maneuvers his plots and people down unexpected side roads. You no sooner think you’re headed in one direction than — boom! — you’re headed in another.

Kidd gets to the heart of Sedaris’s self-mockery early on, when he explains why he became an elf in Macy’s Santa¬Land: “I was only $20 away from walking dogs!” He takes us through the humiliating application process, the training (including a hilarious bit by a motivational speaker leading the wanna-be elves in a S-A-N-T-A cheer). Along the way, he makes fun of disabled adults, disabled children, and the duties of elves — calming complainers in the Santa line, escorting hurlers to the bathrooms, whispering the next child’s name in Santa’s ear (“Van” turns to “Stan”).

The overall target of Sedaris’s mockery is the American obsession of gift-giving and the ridiculous pressure it places on parents and children. Kidd maintains a delicate balance between elfin jollyness (jumping up and down, clapping his hands, his eyes all a-twinkle) and hyper-hysteria (his voice gets squeaky and he pulls his forelock into a point). His comic timing and interaction with the audience are engaging and unforgettable.

The same can be said of Casey Seymour Kim’s performance. Hers, however, is a darker yarn to spin. It begins with a greeting card photo of a house in a snowy countryside and proceeds to a snapshot of six family members: two parents, three grown children, and one grandbaby. Wait. What is that image creeping into the corner of the picture? A young woman, scantily clothed for a northern winter, with Asian eyes and a wide smile.

As the mother of this clan, Kim is intent on taking listeners through the backstory of a recent family tragedy. First she expounds on the virtues of her wonderful older son, next she tries to gloss over her two younger children — one a couch potato, the other a teenaged mother — and then she moves right into the crux of her ire: the 22-year-old Vietnamese love child of her husband’s tour of duty who arrives on their doorstep on Halloween speaking about three words of English.

Kim is terrific at unfolding this saga, all the while wrapping packages, trimming a silvery tree, or tidying the immaculate living room. She is especially memorable (and viciously funny) when she imitates “Khe Sanh” and then pauses to regain her carefully cultivated, passive-aggressive composure. Sedaris’s humor is at its most chilling in this family drama gone terribly awry.

But both mini-plays are stirring up non-stop giggles and guffaws at the Gamm. And that’s as important an element of the holidays as any.