Matt Crabtree as a solo elf in David Sedaris’s Christmas classic, The Santaland Diaries? What a great holiday present! Crabtree has a ball impersonating Sedaris who, when he was a 33-year-old unemployed actor (and dead-broke, to boot), took a job at Macy’s in Herald Square as one of Santa’s elfin helpers. Togged out in a ridiculous costume, he was required to somehow entertain the army of kids and parents awaiting their chance to meet Father Nick (yet another unemployed actor). The indignity of dressing up like that and having to prance around in endless forced merriment soon began to wear on him. It also didn’t help his state of mind that many of the people who showed up in Santaland were anything but friendly toward him. If they weren’t trying to break off pieces of his costume, they were cursing him out and even threatening to sock him in the nose. So much for holiday good cheer.
The Santaland Diaries is comical from beginning to end, but it’s black comedy. The Christmas created by Macy’s was a bogus, kitschy construct meant to attract shoppers to the store; it was a corporate way to exploit the naive belief children had in the Santa myth. Macy’s also treated their Santaland employees like robots; every move they made was dictated and regimented by their bosses. Thus, what on the surface seemed like a fun-loving, goofy kind of job turned out to be pretty much a horror show from beginning to end.
Crabtree, who has performed locally in a previous Sedaris play (The Book of Liz), brings the bizarre world of Santaland to life in a skillful and charismatic way. It would be wonderful if he could do this show every Christmas in L.A.; it’s a perfect antidote to all the usual fakery and humbug of the Yuletide season.
