By Joseph McDonough
Enquirer contributor

If you're looking for Rudolph, Frosty, or jolly old St. Nick, you've come to the wrong place.

New Edgecliff Theatre returns with David Sedaris' satiric one-act The Santaland Diaries, this year teamed with another Sedaris offering, Season's Greetings. The result is a wickedly funny evening of decidedly non-traditional holiday fare.

David Scott Morgan reprises his role from last season as the sarcastic elf in the one-man Santaland. Mr. Morgan also goes it alone in the one-man (actually one-woman) Season's Greetings. More about that later.

Though a bit too young for the role, the elfin Mr. Morgan is a fine comic actor and well suited for Santaland as he humorously recounts NPR commentator Mr. Sedaris' mostly true experiences as a Christmas elf at Macy's department store.

He goes through elf training. He deals with snotty parents and bratty kids. He commiserates with other elves who might be disgusted unemployed actors or too eager and perky for their own good. And he encounters a range of Santas from the passionless to the psychotic.

It's all good fun as we hate every moment of the job right along with him, up to the moment that he meets a Santa who actually has something worthwhile to say.

Director Mary Jo Beresford establishes a relaxed but focused pace though the conclusions of Santaland's short scenes could be more effectively punctuated.

After intermission, Mr. Morgan returns in Season's Greetings as Mrs. Dunbar, a middle-aged mother writing her annual Christmas letter to her friends and relatives.

We soon find that she is not at all pleased with the present state of her household what with the sudden arrival of her husband's long-lost illegitimate Vietnamese daughter, an unexpected grandson from her own drug-addicted daughter, and a son who spends his time carving gnomes out of soap.

Season's Greetings is a more biting and bitter satire. It is also more theatrical. Mr. Morgan and Ms. Beresford nail the caustic humor of a tightly wound suburban witch who unravels as the play takes a weirdly dark turn.

There's no ho-ho-ho here, but it's well done.

New Edgecliff performs in Newport at the Artery Theater, a cozy black box above an art gallery with plenty of free street parking nearby.

The Santaland Diaries and Season's Greetings, through Dec. 22, New Edgecliff Theatre, 913 Monmouth St., (513) 763-3844.