By Alun Montgomery
No doubt about it: t'is the season for seasonal syrup and saccharine-and area stages are hardly immune to them. If you're ready for a break from the parade of schmaltz this year, I have the perfect antidote for you: The Santaland Diaries.
Jacksonville writer-director-actor Ian Mairs recently reprised his role as Crumpet the department store elf at Limelight Theater in St. Augustine, and if audience response and box office are any indicators, a lot of folks were ready for a new take on the holiday experience.
The one-man show chronicles the thinly veiled autobiographical experiences of writer David Sedaris, who spent a portion of his early lean years in New York as one of Santa's helpers at Macy's. Sedaris's 1992 essay was adapted for the stage by playwright Joe Mantello, and the rest as they say is, well, living history at the very least. The show has gone on to become a rapidly metastasizing cult favorite and can usually be found playing somewhere over the holidays at a theater near you.
Budding writer David/Crumpet's initial exuberance at coming to New York to live the dream quickly fades in the face of harsh reality. And as day-job opportunities dwindle and the winter chill sets in, a chance to work in a seemingly bright, warm, and cheerful environment materializes out of nowhere. But what seems at first to be a promising opportunity begins to morph as well, beginning with the interview process and continuing to evolve through orientation, assimilation, and ultimate mortification.
Ah, the things we do for a buck: Crumpet relates the humiliation of working for clueless fools, debasing oneself in childish garb, and enduring the endless abuse of adults and children alike while fighting a losing battle to keep Christmas spirit alive in a horde that is beset by Christmas rather than magically and cheerfully transported by it.
But like Scrooge or the Grinch or even George Bailey, our hero begins a journey that starts to transform him; characters whom he once regarded with horror or outrage or condescension begin to engender a slowly kindling affection in him.
Like a totally non-plussed innocent abroad, Crumpet weaves a faux-felt tapestry of misadventures that are by turns hysterical and mind-numbing, horrifying and heartwarming, and often bizarre beyond belief. The stories are peopled by characters from every age, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, and socioeconomic level. They are steeped in self-absorption or have no self-awareness at all. They are hopelessly bland or bristling with neurotic energy. They are heartbreakingly fragile or astonishingly haughty. In short, they are us, all of them-and that's what makes this piece so achingly funny.
It seems it's rare anymore to see a one-person show in this area, rarer still to see one done well. Mairs is a consummate performer and storyteller; there are few in Northeast Florida who can hold an audience's attention for an entire evening like he can. Having created a virtual troupe of memorable characters over the years, he has again scored a coup not unlike his work in Laughing Wild back in the salad days of the Jacksonville Actors Theater, a company he had helped to create. All of the characters in Santaland come delightfully and indelibly to life. Enthusiastic theatergoers can't ask for a better present.
Here's the bad news: the Limelight's production has already closed for the 2007 season. The good news is that you can probably see a production elsewhere in the area sometime before the spring thaw. Hopefully, that'll tide you over until this one comes back-and trust me, you don't want to miss this one.
The Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) presents their own production of The Santaland Diaries December 19-21. Please call 366-6911 for directions and ticket information
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