For a Different Take on the Holidays . . .

David Sedaris is a small, dolorous, witty fellow who claims he could survive anything — say the death of his mother, a calamitous turn in deepest, craziest America, a month or so as a Christmas elf at Macy’s — as long as he could put it on paper.

   He wrote about all these things and, hearkening to this last, he wrote “The Santaland Diaries,†a piece about his humbling stint in striped tights, velvet bloomers, and pointy shoes  when he was just $20 away from walking dogs in New York City.

    This story, recited on NPR’s “This American Life,†made Sedaris and his Christmas story famous. And many theater companies looking for a hollow-eyed, off-center look at the holidays have put Sedaris’s “Santaland Diaries†on the bill.

   The last I saw was David Drake’s version at Barrington Stage Company six years ago in Sheffield. Surrounded by garish holiday trimmings, Drake’s Sedaris was dry and funny: a desperate man trying to survive in New York by humiliating himself.

    But Shakespeare & Company’s version with Peter Davenport as Sedaris and Tony Simotes as director is a different animal all together.

   For starters, the set is a beigy, refined living room overlooking high-rise Manhattan at night before a holiday cocktail party. The message: whatever trials the youthful writer suffered he not only survived. He triumphed.

   Davenport makes a charming, agile, sweet Sedaris who is shocked by mothers who insist on a white Santa for their offspring, “Like us,† they say, or parents who threaten their children  with physical harm to make them smile on Santa’s lap for the video camera.

   It’s a tough world, Santaland. Diapers get tossed in foamy snowbanks; rough guys with Radio Shack bags heckle the elves — mostly small women and men. And one Santa makes Sedaris sing a holiday song. So the elf sits down at a piano and croons a carol à la Billie Holiday, clutching an invisible gardenia to his brow.

   It’s a sweet story, even though some of the details caused parisioners from an area church to gasp last Sunday. And it’s very entertaining.

   “The Santaland Diaries†runs at Shakespeare & Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre through Dec. 30. For tickets, call 413-637-3353, or go to Shakespeare.org.

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