Based on stories by best-selling author, humorist, NPR commentator, and Time Magazine's 2001 "Humorist of the Year" David Sedaris, The SantaLand Diaries depicts the trials and traumas of dysfunctional holidays, including a hilarious account of a Macy's Christmas elf.

Sedaris once worked as a Macy's Christmas elf, but now he is an author, playwright and frequent commentator on National Public Radio. His most recent collection of essays, "Me Talk Pretty One Day," was a national bestseller”. Chicago Tribune 12/14/2003


The opening sketches, which constitute the first half of Santaland Diaries, are clever spoofs of, first, theater criticism and, then, the television industry. The second half is a well-crafted engaging monologue. Baker allows us to feel the hardship of going to a job that is humiliating and unpleasant, which is something we can all relate to. Plus, the material is interesting; It’s enjoyable to hear about the eccentric individuals and the absurdity that arises. In this final sketch, both Baker and Sedaris reveal to us a bit of what is inside of them and we walk away feeling as if we have lived through the emotional spectrum of an experience that is at once painful and funny".

"No one can read David Sedaris's witty, bitchy, literate prose as well as he does, with just the right sugarcoated sneer. But Lance Stuart Baker, delivering Sedaris's autobiographical account of working as an elf at Macy's, comes very close. This is the third time in six years that Baker's performed Joe Mantello's adaptation, and he's got all the Sedaris vocal mannerisms down cold--the put-upon whine, the devastating, slightly campy aside. Creating a compelling facsimile of the writer-performer, Baker could tour America with a one-man show based on the life and opinions of Sedaris if Sedaris weren't currently doing that himself".

Cyndi Rhoads only sometimes gets the rhythms right in Sedaris's other holiday short story on this program, "Season's Greetings." I suspect the secret to interpreting this bitter comic gem--a twisted Christmas letter from a middle-class housewife whose life falls apart when her husband's illegitimate daughter appears on the scene--is to channel Amy Sedaris. Certainly it's Amy, not David, who's made a career out of playing half-crazy women trying desperately to appear normal. Rhoads captures the character's fussy suburban conventionality but little of the madness just below the surface of her forced smile, and as a result Sedaris's story is only half as funny as it could be”. Jack Helbig, Chicago Reader 12/5/03