BWW Reviews: Satiric, Sardonic SEDARIS at Wolf Trap

With the advent of audio books and broadcasts of short stories on the radio, we are witnessing a renaissance in the art of oral storytelling. It's not enough to be a clever writer with a cutting, sometimes blue sense of humor; now you have to be able to deliver your work live, onstage, before mass audiences. And still be funny.

The best part of it is that you don't have to have a boffo voice. Sure, you can hire some famous actor to read your stuff, but why bother? Audiences want the authentic experience of hearing your work read in your own voice, warts and all. Heck, we've put up with Bob Dylan all these years, right?

Our case-in-point: David Sedaris, who first shot to fame as a reader of his own work. What's truly remarkable is to see how his simple readings have now taken on a life of their own. Once his "Santaland Diaries" appeared on NPR (an audio-memoir, in effect, of his work as an elf at Macy's) this simply hilarious monologue became a play script, and is now holiday fixture on stages everywhere.

Today, Sedaris' work isn't just published in the New Yorker, not just in book form, he is now in huge demand as a reader. Who could have imagined that a snarky, off-beat short story writer could generate such a huge following? And with such a sarcastic, nasal baritone? And yet here he stood at Wolf Trap Farm Park's main stage the other night, surrounded by adoring fans, his old-tech file folder and sheafs of paper in hand. We loved it.

Sedaris is not a technophobe, far from it - but he grew up listening to old-time radio broadcasts (which explains the occasional jokes about Ma and Pa Kettle, among others), and he clearly loves the stage.

Naturally on this night, all of us had our personal favorites that we were hoping to hear - it being August, we might even have been forgiven for thinking Christmas. But Sedaris is not content to rest on his laurels, and he has such a keen eye for new material that he can easily entertain the masses with drafts of new work. One of the many highlights was his recitation of random entries from his diary, which he has kept in varying degrees of frankness for decades. Another story recounts his reaction to the Supreme Court Ruling on Gay marriage - which, in typical snark fashion, he'll only take advantage of if the tax benefits are worth the hassle. (Greeks and taxes - trust me, this makes sense).

Like a good stand-up comedian, Sedaris hones his jokes in private and lets them fly over our heads, to see where they land. Some of them bomb, but so many of them hit their mark that any evening spent with Sedaris is well worth the ticket. It sweetens the pot to know that he's available to sign books before and after the show, too.

What next? Sedaris will continue to delight us with his latest, and I hope he continues to attract new audiences. You'll certainly get to hear stuff he can't get away with on NPR, which is priceless in its own way.

Photo: David Sedaris, by Hugh Hamrick.

Running Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, including post-show Q&A.

Wolf Trap has a full schedule of performances -- for tickets visit: http://www.wolftrap.org/tickets.aspx.

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