Sedaris Tries New Tales at Barclay

David Sedaris fans--and there’s a ton--crave fresh dispatches from his decidedly unspectacular but exhilarating life.

So when the humorist, playwright and National Public Radio regular with the vaguely adolescent voice leaned into the lectern at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Saturday night and announced, “I’ve written some new stories,” a jolt of pleasure went through the sold-out crowd.

Some may have come to hear Sedaris recite oldies from books like “Barrel Fever,” “Naked” and his most recent, the best-selling “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” but this was better.

Sedaris, dressed in an Average Joe’s collection of pale shirt, boring tie and dark pants, barely looked up from his sheaf of papers while telling tales about his family, a favorite fixation.

And then there were riffs on Halloween costumes, St. Nick in Europe, his special interest in professional baseball, a strange device called “The Stadium Pal” and various other detours.

A few were hilarious, some were touching. Not all worked, but every one depended on a mutual understanding with the audience: If you want big insights into the big world out there, look elsewhere, he seemed to say. But if you want to see how one guy navigates his days, here I am.

An unrelenting self-absorption and joyous dedication to detail after detail are what pull us into a Sedaris piece, as anyone can tell you who’s followed his career from 1992 when he read “The SantaLand Diaries” (his recollection of being a Macy’s elf) on NPR.

At the Barclay, his first story began with what favorite Halloween getups say about us (Sedaris mused that kids who habitually appear as robots later become Japanese fashion designers), but quickly, and more intriguingly, turned back on himself.

Sedaris revealed that he always was a hobo, affecting a tattered look and smearing on black paint for a beard. That certainly foretold his future as a traveler (he’s been living in Paris with his companion, painter Hugh Hamrick, for a few years) and the artist’s vow of poverty, at least before he became so popular. When he talked about replacing the stick and bandana with a backpack as he became an adult eager to get around, the circle widened.

Which eventually brought him to visiting Holland recently and meeting a pleasant fellow named Oscar. Sedaris learned from Oscar that St. Nicholas is vastly different from our Santa.

For one thing, he travels with a gang of men who visit homes on Christmas Eve, rewarding good children and “beating and kicking” bad ones.

Sedaris paused, drolly signaling further that the tale, whether based on fact or not, had taken on a decidedly un-holiday tone.

His vignette on “The Stadium Pal,” a catheter-like gizmo that Sedaris bought so he wouldn’t have to visit the bathroom so often during book tours, felt strained because it was just an off-color gag with nothing to expand our interest.

Apparently, however, it’s one of his new favorites: Sedaris said he may read it during a scheduled appearance with David Letterman on Thanksgiving Day.

His fretting over wearing a fanny prosthetic, although ticklishly weird, also stalled. But he quickly regained momentum when he launched into “The Beef People,” a story about his family, especially his sisters, and how very early on we become branded as being this or that.

“Thief, follower, leader--it happens,” he said. “I might be able to reinvent myself to strangers, but not to family.... I was the irresponsible one, the one most likely to set the house on fire.”