Theater review part deux: The Santaland Diaries

by Christopher Soden of Christopher Soden, Dallas GLBT Arts Examiner

Nye Cooper’s a great choice for this extended soliloquy and has much experience playing Crumpet.

As anyone who’s ever worked in retail can attest, it doesn’t take long before boisterous holiday cheer gives way to apocalyptic panic. As days drop from the calendar and Christmas looms ever closer on the horizon, customers descend the evolutionary ladder and the pretense of civilization quickly begins to evaporate. This premise reveals the brilliance behind The SantaLand Diaries, a show-length monologue told from the point of view of a nameless, weary, gay man who must temporarily ignore his aspirations of acting on a popular soap to sign on as an elf at Macy’s. Based on an essay from the David Sedaris collection, Holidays on Ice, this jaundiced, sharp, surprisingly introspective piece creates a microscope to examine just how far we have come from Bethlehem, 42nd Street, and Bedford Falls.

When I found my table at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, I was expecting something of a one-note satire on the plight of a grown man, forced to dress as one of Santa’s helpers and pander to bunch of brainless schmucks. Some of that is in the material to be sure, but The SantaLand Diaries is far more modulated, with moments of warmth and melancholy and grownups behaving abominably. It’s not an easy balance. Our hero (who chooses the name “Crumpet” for his elfin persona) is disappointed and cynical and worn down by life’s afflictions.

George Wada

Nye Cooper in The Santaland Diaries

SantaLand Diaries is his story, beginning when he jokingly applies for a seasonal position at the iconic department store. The incidents enumerated are not as harrowing as say, Bad Santa or Day of the Locust, and Crumpet’s ironic delivery avoids the realms of tragedy and melodrama. Mostly it’s funny, but Sedaris manages some genuine poignancy in the midst of all this withering observation. “I’m not really a good person,” Crumpet confides, and who can’t identify with that?

Nye Cooper’s a great choice for this extended soliloquy and has much experience playing Crumpet. It’s easy to understand why. When he’s in character a wry, disenchanted expression comes over his features with a smile so painfully forced you could imagine scorpions in his tights. He brings to The SantaLand Diaries what Julie Harris did to The Belle of Amherst or Hal Holbrook to Mark Twain Tonight. He’s a natural at comic acting and easy to sympathize with, whether you’re a grouch or cockeyed optimist. Personally, I wish his interpretation had a bit more piqué, a bit more bite -- like Ralph Fiennes or (going back much further) George Sanders, who can seem infinitely used up yet entirely poised. We know Crumpet “works” because he’s disaffected, because he has no illusions about other people, the world, or himself. So to embrace Crumpet’s protective apathy and still summon the silent hum that tips his hand is delicate chemistry at best.

Rodney Dobb’s SantaLand set (Santa’s throne, a hearth complete with stockings, oversized toy blocks) brings just the right amount of zippy Department Store kitsch to give the content some high relief. Aaron Patrick Turner’s costume design (Crumpet’s elf costume) is delirious and delicious with its candy-striped tights, jangle bells, green velvet vest, and impossibly curled cap and slippers. It’s a hilarious contrast to Crumpet’s cynical bearing, the disillusioned curmudgeon hiding the fragile, credulous boy underneath.