The Santaland Diaries and The Loush Sisters: Making the Yuletide Gay (We’ll Pass on the Fruitcake), PlayhouseSquare

(Kevin Joseph Kelly as Crumpet)

The Santaland Diaries is the most accidental of Christmas traditions. The author of the original material, renowned essayist and humorist David Sedaris, never wanted his words to be rejiggered for the stage. Still, it happened, with Joe Mantello doing the adaptation, and the rest is history.

That history is now being revisited once more at PlayhouseSquare in the 14^th Street Theatre. This time around, Santaland is sharing the stage with The Loush Sisters as a second act treat, both directed by Elizabeth Wood and produced by Raymond Bobgan and the Cleveland Public Theatre..

In Santaland, Sedaris writes about his tenure as a paid elf named Crumpet at Macy’s during the holiday season. This is not a happy elf, mind you, but an elf that wallows in all the excesses and absurdities of his job dealing with aggressive parents. vomiting kids, and an array of dysfunctional Santas.

There have been several iterations of Crumpet the Elf in these parts, but nobody has come close to matching the elfin-voiced charm and subversive edge that Curtis Proctor brought to the role more than ten years ago.

Nobody, that is, until Kevin Joseph Kelly, who is the sole performer in this production. Even though Kelly is large both physically and vocally, not exactly typecasting, he works from the neurotic characteristics of the narrator to create this cynical, acid-tongued gnome from hell. And he’s frequently hilarious.

From the initial job interview process to his final “Christmas miracle” moment of insight, Kelly smoothly delivers these gaily-wrapped goods (emphasis on the “gay”). When not pining after his co-elf heartthrob Snowball (plus a couple gentlemen in the audience), Kelly’s Crumpet is on target. And he deftly handles all the choppy moments in a script that sounds more like a real diary than a polished monologue.

After intermission, The Loush Sisters arrive in the persons of Liz Conway and Sheffia Randall Dooley. This fast-paced half-hour of mangled Christmas carols, weirdly appropriate pop songs and snappy dialogue is a nice follow-up to Kelly’s one-man show.

Written by Conway, Wood and musical director Michael Seevers, Jr., this is essentially a throwaway piece of holiday hoo-hah. But Conway and Dooley make you glad they throw it your way.

The two performers adopt a hybrid version of the overlapping conversation style made famous by the two SNL ladies in the NPR cooking show parody “The Delicious Dish.” (Here’s their famous holiday time “Schweddy Balls” skit.) But they amp it up to 10,000 rpm as they strafe the audience with rapid-fire song medleys and a fractured storyline about their mom (the aforementioned Kelly, now in drag).

It all makes no sense whatsoever but it works because Conway is a hot-wired, surefire presence on stage—probably funnier right now that any other woman in the current SNL cast except for Kristen Wiig. And Dooley holds her own, generating chuckles and using her better singing voice to anchor the duets.

All in all, it’s a blast of an evening that should become its own tradition.

The Santaland Diaries and The Loush Sisters: Making the Yuletide Gay (We’ll Pass on the Fruitcake)

Through December 17 at PlayhouseSquare, the 14^th Street Theatre, 2067 E. 14^th St., Cleveland, 216-241-6000