Casy Seymour Kim plays Jocelyn Dunbar in Season’s Greetings.

Peter Goldberg

There’s holiday cheer to be had at Pawtucket’s Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre, but cheer with a dark twist. The company has paired a couple of holiday monologues by humorist David Sedaris, whose comic sense is salted with the offbeat, and in some cases the downright bizarre.

Steve Kidd, a dutiful ensemble player at the Gamm over the years, has stepped into the spotlight for SantaLand Diaries, Sedaris’ riotous tale of his time spent as a department store Christmas elf. Casey Seymour Kim plays a Midwestern mom, Jocelyn Dunbar, in Season’s Greetings, a less successful piece about a family trying to put a smiley face on their Christmas after enduring a ghastly tragedy.

Gifted comedian that she is, Kim just couldn’t quite save Season’s Greetings from its improbable twists and turns, grisly plot and long stretches of talkiness. But she does get the occasional big laugh, mostly for her quirky mannerisms and spot-on impersonations of the Vietnamese love-child that has invaded their family. Seems that Jocelyn’s husband, the unseen Clifford, did more than go out on scouting parties during the war.

Still, SantaLand Diaries is the more consistent of the two, funny, full of colorful images and saying so much about human behavior. Perhaps that is because it is autobiographical, which gives it a ring of truth, its convincing flow and its eye for detail.

Season’s Greetings, by comparison, seems a little forced.

The Steve Kidd of SantaLand is a 33-year-old loser, without a job and “$20 away from walking dogs.” He spies an ad in the paper for a Macy’s elf and a chance to be “at the center of attention.” After a couple of interviews and a drug test (he was sure he failed; he swore there were roaches and stems floating in his urine sample), Kidd gets to dress up in a green velvet outfit with candy-cane striped tights, curly-toed shoes and a stocking cap. He calls himself Crumpet.

Basically, SantaLand takes us through the travails of the department store elfdom, the parade of oddball characters Kidd encounters, the pushy parents loaded down with video equipment to capture the magic of their kid’s meeting with Santa, and the woman who let her child pee in a fake snowdrift.

Then there are Kidd’s coworkers, like the woman whom he calls Flakey, an artist from Kansas City who covers radios with human hair. She offers him a deal on a blond clock radio: just $300. Who wants to part the hair on their alarm clock just so they can read the time? He asks. The so-called Walrus is always hitting on the moms. Snowball is just a tease, and you don’t want to be “working under a jilted Santa,” writes Sedaris, a regular contributor to National Public Radio.

Kidd, of the infectious smile, is perfect for the part, quick, perky, dashing from the Magic Tree to Santa’s House. His timing is there, and he doesn’t miss a beat, even though he is on stage by himself for an hour.

In one of his shining moments, Kidd, at the request of a Santa, sings “Away in a Manger” as Billie Holiday might, had she put out a Christmas album. Then there is the skit when he tells a bratty child how Santa no longer gives out lumps of coal to misbehaving children, but instead comes to their houses and robs them blind. He’ll take your refrigerator, says Kidd, and your food will go bad, he’ll steal your car, your blankets and leave you with nothing. You’ll suffer.

The show, which is pretty irreverent, looks like it’s going to end on a warm and fuzzy note. Sedaris slips into his reflective, sensitive mode, but then dashes to the finish with a dose of cynicism.

Again, Season’s Greetings is not nearly so well crafted. Kim is delivering what amounts to a video Christmas message to her friends, one that offers a detailed flashback about recent events in the family, the horrendous crime that has taken place, and how she has been dragged into it.

The story is told by Kim, matriarch of the Dunbar clan, in a Minnesotan accent and a slightly hysterical edge. On Halloween, a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman shows up on their doorstep of their home on Tiffany Circle, announcing that she is the daughter of husband Clifford. Kim thinks she looks like a prostitute and resents her presence, especially when he begins hitting on their college-age son when he is home for Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, a daughter marries a loser of a guy with flames tattooed on his neck. They have a child named Satan, before he dumps her. Slides of all these characters are flashed on a wall behind Kim to help us form a picture of them.

While the Dunbars’ life is strange, it is not always funny. I found myself sitting though long stretches of the show without so much as cracking a smile. But Kim can be a hoot, even when she doesn’t intend to. She tried to open a telescoping pointer to indicate members of the family on a slide, but couldn’t get a grip on it.

This is what happens, she adlibbed, when you put lotion on your hands before coming on stage.

She also does some hilarious impersonations of the Vietnamese stepdaughter, with her halting, TV-inspired English. And she is very funny when she tries to speak with her in rudimentary sign language.

But Season’s Greetings just didn’t sparkle like SantaLand Diaries.

Seasons’s Greetings and SantaLand Diaries, adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello, run through Dec. 24 at the Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St., Pawtucket. Tickets are $19-$31. Call (401) 723-4266, or purchase tickets are www.arttixri.com