Christmas Creeps into Ithaca: The Santaland Diaries at The Kitchen Theatre
Just last week, the building where I work began to deck the halls, not with boughs of holly, but with long strands of faux pine garland, gathered into a large fake velvet bow every ten feet or so. A wreath has been hung over the main door. The faux greenery will, no doubt, be joined by the inflatable Santa riding a reindeer on the candy cane carousel (No. Really. That’s not hyperbole). The large inflatable snow globe will take its home beneath the stairwell and transport me, not to a snow covered hillside in a wintry pastoral scene replete with a snow family, but to flashes and visions of spinning NYSEG electric meters and smokestacks. Hardly sugar plums.
But if I wanted sugar plums, they’d not be hard to find. A quick run to a local gourmet shop, or the supermarket could’ve filled that need as early as Halloween. The boxed candy canes were going up as the bulk Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were being shuffled to a discount bin. So what gives? Why all this Christmas before Thanksgiving?
While I personally prefer the term Early Onset Christmas, I’m told the powers that be have chosen to dub the phenomenon “Christmas Creep.” My term implies kindly forgetfulness—it’s sympathetic, empathetic even. It’s human. Christmas Creep does not conjure up the same feeling of gentility. For me, it conjures up visions of a tall gaunt individual, angry, alone, perhaps capable of commanding a legion of killer Santas, their faces painted, weapons wielded, swooping down in sleighs with rabid reindeer like the army of flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. Okay. Maybe that’s hyperbole. At least a little, anyhow.
It isn’t hard to imagine that the Christmas Creep might somehow be wrapped in a more clever disguise, something more befitting the season, something less suspicious, something, say, capable of actually creeping. Like an elf. Okay, like a very specific elf. You’d have to make this elf a down on his luck writer, desperate for a job. Any job. You’d have to put him in the happiest place on the planet, maybe Santaland, Macy’s, New York City, preferably in the midst of the Christmas Crunch (Crunch shall hereto forth be the name given to the actual time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, not to be confused with the creeping period). Give him a list of rules. Make him deal with an increasingly aggressive crowd that takes the warm and fuzzy right out of the holiday. And ask him to be nice.
What you couldn’t ask him to do, however, is keep quiet and not tell his story to legions of NPR listeners. And you couldn’t force theatres across the country, including Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre, to not stage his story every year at holiday time. The elf is Crumpet; the writer is David Sedaris; the story is The Santaland Diaries, adapted by Joe Mantello. Adapted from Sedaris’ own real life experiences, which originally aired in essay form on NPR in 1992, Mantello turned the story into a full length, one man play that pulls back the red velvet with white trim and black patent belt to expose the underbelly of Christmas.
Previewing Thanksgiving weekend with special performances on November 27th and 28th, actor Karl Gregory will reprise the role of Crumpet the Elf, which he first played in 2005. Gregory, who recently earned his MFA in Acting from Brown/Trinity Rep, is a crowd favorite in Ithaca, having worked at both The Kitchen and Hangar Theatres. I spoke with Karl recently and he’s just he’s excited to get the chance at this role again. “I’m a totally different person than I was five years ago. It must affect my work, right? It’s fun because we can do something different this time,” he says.
When I asked Karl about the “Christmas Creep” he remarked, “Sounds like some fat guy in a lawn chair, with a Santa hat and a beer. Maybe a playpen in the back…” And indeed, as Karl goes on, it’s “much better” than the Google definition. With a Sedaris-style wit, sarcasm, and charm, Karl is really able to bring Crumpet to life in a way that I can only imagine Mantello intended. And he looks great in an elf suit.
It’s no surprise then that the Kitchen Theatre would choose this production to be a part of their 20th anniversary season, and to help them celebrate their new location at 417 W. State St./Martin Luther King, Jr. St. The new space remains intimate at just 99 seats and continues to feature acting or actors that, by their very proximity, often require engagement from the audience, both during the performance and, hopefully, after you leave. It’s an arrangement both audiences and actors have grown to love.
Whether you’ve worked retail during the holidays (cheers, but Karl Gregory has not), been to Santaland at Macy’s (again, Karl has not), love Christmas (surprise, Karl does not), read everything David Sedaris has written (Karl has read them all!), or not, you definitely want to catch The Santaland Diaries at the Kitchen Theatre running December 1st-19th, with a special holiday preview on November 27th and 28th.
For more information on the show and to purchase tickets, visit www.kitchentheatre.org
–Jennifer B. Brown is a Contributor to The Free George.
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