Toby Berner plays humourist David Sedaris in the arts Club staging of The Santaland Diaries.David Cooper
Long before he became a bestselling author, Grammy-nominated National Public Radio broadcaster and beloved New Yorker contributor, David Sedaris, was Crumpet, a lowly 33-year-old Christmas elf at Macy's department store in New York.
Decked out in a green velvet costume, he witnessed fist fights, vomiting and magnificent tantrums; he told bratty kids that Santa would come to their house, take everything and leave them in the dark; he sang Away in a Manger as he imagined Billy Holiday would; he flirted with an adorable elf named Snowball. All the while, he dreamed of writing for his favourite soap, One Life to Live.
Mr. Sedaris transformed his experience into the now legendary Santaland Diaries, a blisteringly funny story that he performed on NPR and has since become a popular one-man stage play, which the Arts Club is presenting just in time for this year's holiday shopping mayhem.
"Christmas really is a crass, commercial, overdone holiday where people tend to lose their minds," actor Toby Berner, who plays Mr. Sedaris in the Arts Club production, says with a laugh. "And when I first heard Santaland Diaries, I was struck by how smart and clever and funny it is, but also how it takes you down a bit of a dark path, how Santaland is really about pulling as much money out of these people as possible."
In the piece, which is directed by local favourite John Murphy, Mr. Berner voices all of the parts, from snooty mothers to rigid supervisors amid a set that transforms into various areas of Santaland, where theatregoers visit spots like Vomit Corner and meet elves, from Water Cooler Elf to Cash Register Elf to Photo Elf.
But lest you worry you will walk out ready to throw in the glittery towel on Christmas, in The Santaland Diaries, even Crumpet learns the true meaning of the holidays – eventually.
"He meets a Santa who is great with the kids and great with the adults, too, and makes everybody fall in love with Christmas again," says Mr. Berner, whose own oddest job was dressing up as a large purple dinosaur for a local roller hockey team and having kids mistake him for Barney.
"He discovers there is a real Christmas spirit, and you can be merry around Christmas – even when you're working a job as an elf surrounded by parents going crazy over Christmas."
The Santaland Diaries is at the Arts Club Revue Stage Nov. 21-Dec. 21.