Writer and performer David Sedaris skyrocketed to fame with his essay The Santaland Diaries, which detailed the quirky ins and outs of performing as an elf in Macy's Department Store in New York. First it was broadcast via radio on NPR, then published and eventually transformed into a hit one-man show by director Joe Mantello. Mitchell Fain returns to star in the Chicago production, which has been the purview of Theater Wit for many holiday seasons.
The Santaland Diaries continues now through Sunday, Dec. 28, at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets are $24-$36; call 773-975-8150 or visit www.theaterwit.org . Photo of Fain by Johnny Knight
CRITICS' PICKS
Camelot, Drury Lane Theatre, Oakbrook Terrace, through Jan. 4. Director/choreographer Alan Souza shakes up the classic 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical with a welcome revisionist approach that emphasizes the show's sexuality and violence. SCM
The Inside, MPAACT at Greenhouse Theater Center, through Nov. 30. Breaking with stereotype is a lonely job, says the soliloquizing heroine of Lydia R. Diamond's early observation of privileged north shore vie-de-boheme. MSB
Strandline, A Red Orchid Theatre, through Dec. 7. Abbie Spallen's Ireland is not the nostalgic ruritania we Yankees are accustomed to seeing, but a post-civil war society as amoral and treacherous as the Balkans or Ukraine. MSB
Titanic, Griffin Theatre at Theater Wit, through Dec. 7. This beautifully sung and intimate production makes a very strong case for Maury Yeston's five-time Tony-winning musical based upon the 1912 maritime disaster to be staged in a small theater rather than a big Broadway barn. SCM
By Abarbanel, Barnidge
and Morgan