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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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by jon bosworth
jaxvillain@yahoo.com
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What: Live Theatre: SantaLand Diaries
Where: Museum of Modern Art, Jacksonville (Formerly JMoMA)
When: Dec. 19, 20 and 21 7:30 p.m.
“Worse than applying for a job as an elf, is the very real possibility of not getting the job.”
Jacksonville actor and playwright Ian Mairs performs a sardonic one-man show about being an elf in the New York Macy’s. If you’ve never read anything by David Sedaris, Ian Mairs’ one-man performance of the The SantaLand Diaries is a great way to discover him. David Sedaris is a humorist, author, and sometimes NPR personality. His dry take on everyday life is always hilarious.
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From Barrel Fever through Dress My Family in Denim and Corduroy, Sedaris’ books read like a conversation with that catty gay friend that keeps you laughing. He is the gayer, thinner, wittier Garrison Keilor. His SantaLand Diaries was initially a radio essay that aired on the NPR show Morning Edition. It was this essay that earned him the popularity that started his career as a humorist.
The Sedaris family is a strange sort of celebrity family. Not a celebrity family in the Baldwin or Arquette sense, but more of an avant-garde New York celebrity family. Although they grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, David and his sister, Amy Sedaris, have found a great deal of success in New York. Most of David’s books end up on the New York Times Best Seller list, and Amy has had a successful television and movie career, not to mention her own success as a writer. She recently released a humorous book about entertaining, but before that she wrote television with Steven Colbert on Strangers with Candy, has a regular advice column in Believer magazine, and even runs a popular cupcake and cheeseball company from her home in the city. David and Amy have also written a number of plays together under the pen name “The Talent Family.”
The Santaland Diaries is one of David Sedaris’ satirical takes on the Christmas season (and if you like it, you should check out his book Holidays on Ice). SantaLand Diaries was adapted for the stage in 1998 by Joe Montello, and Ian Mairs has been perfecting his Sedaris by performing it for the last four Christmases.
Mairs is hilarious. His performance doesn’t miss a single note of the sarcasm laid thickly into this tale of an average cynic that takes on the role of one of Santa’s elves. Mairs plays Crumpet, this is the name Sedaris was assigned when he became one of Santa’s Little Helpers, and finding the Christmas spirit is a humorous struggle for this particular elf. While he has fantasies of meeting his soap opera heroes and even about his role as Crumpet being the beginning of his daytime drama career, the funniest moments are the insights that The SantaLand Diaries provides on the ridiculous things we do for holiday traditions, as well as the ridiculous people humans can be, especially in Macy’s at Christmas.
From his hilarious take on ethnic Santas to the moving moment when he meets a Santa that might just be the real thing, Mairs’ portrayal of Sedaris is not only spot-on, but the magic of the season might have snuck into the one-man-show. Somehow it did this without derailing the whimsical mood or the sarcastic tone.
Ian Mairs performs this play annually on behalf of the Oasis Theater Studio. If you like what you see, you should look into being part of the Oasis Theater Studio. In addition to general acting classes, they put on or take part in a large number of live theatre events around town, so if the stage isn’t for you, support a production or volunteer in other capacities. Ian is a critical part of the group, and judging by his decision to maintain this “twisted holiday tradition,” as he said to the Times-Union, you can count on Oasis to put together performances that step outside of the traditional view.
The performances of The SantaLand Diaries sell out almost every year, so if you call the museum and are unable to get tickets to either of the performances at the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art, then you can catch it at the Atlantic Beach Experimental Theatre on December 22nd and 23rd at 8 p.m.
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