FERNDALE, Mich.–When Richard Payton takes The Ringwald stage, before he even says a word, he pours himself a tumbler of Tito’s vodka, sucks down a few gulps, and appropriately shudders and cringes.

It’s what most of us need, or wish for, right about now, during the ostensibly “most wonderful time of the year.” But Payton has the cajones, the chops, and the spotlight to play out the darkly comic underbelly of the holidays by way of Joe Mantello’s delightful 1996 stage adaption of David Sedaris’s SantaLand Diaries, the 1992 personal essay about his stint as Crumpet, one of Santa’s elves at the Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan.

Sedaris originally read the work on NPR’s Morning Edition which sparked his now illustrious career, and it was later tweaked for an episode of “This American Life.” It has since become a Christmas classic, as well as the basis for his collection “Holidays on Ice.”

It tells the tale of Sedaris’s desperate interview to land seasonal employment as one of Santa’s helpers one Christmas through his cutting out of work on Christmas Eve.

SantaLand Diaries feels more like a staged reading than a play. Richard Payton, whom Joe Bailey described during his curtain speech opening night as “a national treasure,” is just that.

Hardly an overstatement, he makes this well-loved and, at this point, well-worn if not dated material, come alive. No radio show can offer a sexy elfin strip tease, or Payton’s sparkling eyes as he sasses imaginary children and narcissistic mothers and the worst dude bros in the City, or his inspired Cher impression.

And even more fun than Payton’s interpretation of Sedaris’s hilariously irreverent text is the way he improvises with what he’s confronted with on any given night. His responsiveness—to the audience, to a loud bang on the front door of the theatre (“Macy’s closed,” he shouted), and to falling props (when a nutcracker fell from a table, he knocked off a gift box, sending it flying; then when a snowflake ornament slipped off the wall, he smacked something else down—to spontaneous laughter)—is what makes live theatre unlike anything else. You just never know what’s going to happen, and in the right performer’s hands, surprises turn to delight.

The prop tossing actually happened opening night during the show’s second act, a dramatic performance in drag of Sedaris’s wicked satire of insipid family holiday missives, “Seasons Greetings to our Friends and Family.”

Payton is an absolute riot as Jocelyn Dunbar, desperate housewife and matriarch who refuses to allow her family to become “a charitable organization” despite the unwanted arrival of a crack baby grandchild and Vietnamese prostitute and bastard child of her Veteran husband into the annual Christmas mess.

This particular material of Sedaris’s is, at times, offensive and shows its age. I mean, dead babies are always funny, but making fun of developmentally disabled children and Asians is awfully hard to pull off these days, even for Richard Payton.

But ultimately this show is a well-loved and time-honored tradition at The Ringwald, and it offers what many of us need most this time of year: a real respite from all the feigned cheerfulness and expectations of the season with some dark and twisted hilarity.

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