The Santaland Diaries

David Sedaris’s memoir-gone-monologue has become a holiday institution, the urban hipster’s analog to A Christmas Carol. Most likely, you’ve encountered the material, either through a live production, on the page or in Sedaris’s own radio rendition. But in case you’ve spent the last decade in a vacuum, here’s a thumbnail: Sedaris recounts his experience playing a Macy’s elf during the holidays. He is wry and sometimes caustic. He hopes to catch a glimpse of his favorite soap stars from One Life to Live. He never learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Of course, if that were all there was to it, we’d hardly have a new holiday classic: The notion that the commercialization of Christmas spawns some truly ugly and crass phenomena is hardly groundbreaking. The triumph is in Sedaris’s wonderfully arch writing. His observations are imbued with an off-kilter sourball-sweetness, as if he’s not simply horrified by what he sees, but rather revels in his own horror.

And that’s what’s missing from Baker’s rendition. A longtime veteran of the show (this is his fourth production), Baker seems to have lost touch with the true meaning of Santaland. Starting with the overlong improvisational vamp with the audience, Baker conveys the sense that we’re not so much watching the character as watching Baker play him. And comment on playing him. That’s too much ironic detachment by half; because of it, we lose some of Sedaris’s best moments. Late in the piece, Baker begins to find his way, but by then it’s too late to make up for lost ground and missed laughs.—Kay Daly