The Arts Club’s presentation of David Sedaris’ Santaland Diaries had me in stitches throughout its 70 minute running time.

The basic premise of Santaland Diaries is one man’s observation during the Christmas season as he takes on the job as Crumpet the elf at Macy’s Herald Square’s Santaland.

Ryan Beil is Crumpet who in real-life is an aspiring soap opera write who dreams of writing for One Life to Live (this play takes place in the early 90s since this particular soap is now cancelled).

I thought it was hilarious as Crumpet recounts his glee of meeting some actors from the soap and meeting people who actually know some of the actors or have appeared on the soap. I love how he calls each of these people by their soap opera character names and never by the name of the actor that portrayed them. I can relate because when I used to be into soap operas those people where their characters.

A lot of Sedaris’ observations of department story Santa’s and the characters that work during this time period are spot on and Beil delivers each of them with hilarity and spot-on imitations of New Yorkers, irritated mothers, in awe children and even Billie Holiday. My favourite observations were of how 2-4 year olds don’t care a lick about getting their picture taken with Santa as they have no concept of what pictures are and I also loved how Crumpet was spot on with parents and their multiple cameras trying to ensure that they get the perfect picture of their child with Santa. Since this took place in the 1990s, this is still the case but probably a lot worse considering we live in the digital age and have more time to get that right picture.

I did love the audience participation part of the play and when Crumpet pointed at me to say what I would leave Santa, I wished I came up with a funnier response than just cookies.

I enjoyed John Murphy’s direction of having a very minimalistic set and loved his use of projections. And with Beil doing a very good at describing his job as an elf in Macy’s Santaland, I was able to visualize and imagine that I was actually at Macy’s.

If you are looking for a good laugh during the Holidays, see Santaland Diaries but I wouldn’t take the kids as its definitely filled with some very salty language more so than a salted caramel latte from Starbucks.