The Santaland Diaries
Horizon Theatre
through December 31, 2016

The turkey will soon gone and the lights will shine on the trees and it’s that time when the malls are full of Christmas Carols, the retailers are hustling you to run up your credit card bills, and most of us just wish that things would change for the better for everybody all around the world.  Especially, after our somewhat eerie election.

Years ago playwright David Sedaris actually did work as an elf at Macy’s.   His humor is great; albeit is loaded with single entendres and occasionally loaded with expletives.  So, this is not for the little people, nor the prudes among us.

Directed by Jeff Adler, they have an outstanding cast who all return to reprise their roles.  Crumpet, the hard-up loser who has little choice other than to try to get hired as an elf at Macy’s, is played for the eighteenth year by Harold Leaver.  He is the perfect Crumpet as he blends the original monologue script with some updated ad-libs and works the house by interacting with some of the audience.  Who says that accountants can’t have a sense of humor?

Enoch King returns as Crumpet’s sidekick and maybe a half a dozen other cameo roles, much to the delight of the audience..  And, Lala Cochran is the female sidekick as well as agent provocateur, in many guises.  And two interns get to share center stage with them in several schticks.

Each of these players “owns” their roles, and has played them on a yearly basis.   But, WTF?  Hasn’t Chris Kayser come on as Scrooge for umpteen years?  It’s a standard; akin to going to see the lights at the Botanical Garden or the Nutcracker Ballet.   Who says older folks can’t have fun?

If you have seen the show before you’ll recognize that they’ve made a few changes in the script to bring it up to date as they included some recent political comments.  It’s 90 minutes of fun and laughter and that’s something we all could use more of these days.   And coming up December 3rd through 31st they will present Madeline’s Christmas in collaboration with Atlanta Children’s Theatre Company.   For tickets, times and full info for both shows just go to HorizonTheatre.com