In Christmas content, nostalgia looms large, and audiences tend to prefer ritual predictability to surprise. An “ain’t broke, don’t fix” spirit doubtless led PCS to stage Story as a faithful scene-by-scene re-creation of the 1983 movie, from costumes to cars. In the same vein, the company seemed primed to sign over Santaland’s sole role of Crumpet the Macy’s Christmas Elf to the charming Wade McCollum in perpetuity. Alas, after a couple seasons of showing up with bells on, the Cabaret and Hedwig vet couldn’t resist the siren song of Portland Playhouse’s Angels In America . (Don’t fret, Portland. We’re not losing an elf; we’re gaining a gay!)

Into the curl-toed shoes steps Jim Lichtscheidl, whose credits include Coen Brothers film A Serious Man, and whose overall bearing maintains the title. Throughout his various impressions of addled Santa-seekers and manic Macy’s staffers, Jim maintains a sense of the narrator’s detached judgmentalism. The audience experience is, therefore, fairly complex: even as we marvel at the secondary characters’ quirkiness and naiveté, we perceive a steely glimmer of Sedaris’s disapproval shining through the corner of Jim’s eye.

Santaland isn’t merely a Christmas tale, but a deep exploration of the customer-service dynamic, pitting the whimsy that we’re sold (in this case, a snowy cotton wonderland peopled by magical elves) against the gears that grind behind the scenes (Breakroom, time card, vomit cleanup.) But while Sedaris is clearly tempted to demonize customers, he eventually reveals a philosophical twist: Cheerless providers are as bad as thoughtless consumers, while the real heroes are the believers on both sides.

“I’m not a good person,” Crumpet summarizes after watching a stellar mall Santa bring a family to wistful tears. This bittersweet confession is a classic in comedy because it more or less speaks to us all. And it fits a Christmas cynic like a pair of candycane-striped tights.

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The one-person performance piece, written by humorist David Sedaris and adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello, relates Sedaris’ own experiences as he reluctantly worked as an elf in Macy’s Christmastime Santaland display. The play offers a hilarious behind-the-scenes look at how department stores manufacture Christmas spirit.

This year the role of the would-be elf is played by Minneapolis-based comic actor Jim Lichtscheidl. Directed by Wendy Knox, the tall, lean Lichtscheidl gives a wryly droll performance. As the newly hired elf Crumpet, Lichtscheidl is at times sardonically humorous in describing the department store employees and patrons who participate in the strange Santaland rituals, and yet the comedy cuts both ways. As Lichtscheidl’s performance makes perfectly clear, Crumpet is also the butt of the humor. For instance, even as Lichtscheidl’s Crumpet may mercilessly mock the outlandish almost goofy perkiness of other elves, his own wide-eyed enthusiasm for soap opera stars with whom he dreams of hobnobbing is no less outrageous.

Lichtscheidl demonstrates his comic range by giving life to Crumpet’s portraits of his various co-workers and patrons. In the blink of an eye, Crumpet’s world-weary outsider’s perspective of Macy’s merriment turns into a broad parody of grinning peppy advocacy of elfin philosophy. During the course of the 70-minute show, Lichtscheidl similarly takes on the voice and physical life of exhausted old Santas, lecherously self-absorbed elves, aggressive and patronizing parents, abrasive floor managers, and sweetly innocent as well as demonically bratty children.

All of this may at times seem rather un-Christmaslike, but towards the play’s end, Sedaris’ tale gives us a glimpse of what a true Christmas spirit might look like. This short scene in which Crumpet describes and enacts a mysteriously good-natured Santa brings out a compassionate side of the somewhat jaded Crumpet. But don’t worry: neither Sedaris’ story nor Lichtscheidl’s performance slips too far toward the sentimental.

Knox keeps the show moving at a fast clip. Although some of the transitions in the narrative seem a bit rushed, our hero’s humorous wit and the irony of his predicament keep us laughing.

With regard to this irony, costume and scenic designer Jessica Ford makes no small contribution. Both her design for the ridiculous elf costume, which Lichtscheidl dons during the course of the play, as well as her scenic representation of the colorful, cartoonish candy-cane Santaland world, which is revealed midway through the play, help convey the ludicrous nature of the employment in which Crumpet finds himself temporarily trapped. But then, as we all know nowadays, a job is a job.
Mawkish sentimentality might not be the goal here but, thankfully, playful fun abounds.

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