Elf The Musical, the cheery – very, very cheery – revival opening tonight for a restricted vacation run on Broadway, is a completely appropriate present from a hard-working forged for followers of the favored 2003 Will Ferrell Christmas perennial. When you crack up at reminiscences of Mr. Narwhal (right here represented by a big tusk rising from the orchestra pit because the conductor intones, “Bye Buddy, hope you discover your dad!”), Elf has your tinseled title on it.
For the everybody else – adults anyway – the up to date Elf stays as a lot a blended bag because it was throughout its earlier two Broadway stagings in 2010 and 2012, with one main enchancment: Grey Henson, the immensely likable, pitched-to-the-rafters firecracker from Imply Women and Shucked, steps as simply into Buddy’s inexperienced winklepickers as Cinderella ever did a glass slilpper.
Henson and the remainder of the forged (really, the remainder of the manufacturing) go huge and loud within the model of youngsters’s theater, with no joke (together with some clearly current additions) or emotion underplayed. At two hours and half-hour, that’s a whole lot of huge. Wearying huge.
However the artistic workforce behind this adaptation – Philip Wm. McKinley directs, with a e-book by Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin and music by Matthew Sklar and Chad Begueli – pull off a neat trick within the closing scenes, brightening the present’s tempo and delivering Elf‘s finest moments. Amongst others, there’s a knock-out duet (“There Is A Santa Claus”) sung by two of the manufacturing’s most interesting singers (Ashley Brown and younger Kai Edgar because the mom and son in Buddy the Elf’s newfound human household), and Santa’s amusingly lurching sleigh experience over the entrance rows of the viewers (assume Again To The Future‘s DeLorean as if replicated for a kind of quarter-a-ride gizmos exterior supermarkets).
Gray Henson and Sean Astin
Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
The storyline hews to the film: A motherless human child has been raised as an elf within the North Pole by Santa and his helpers. Now 30 (and really tall) Buddy lastly learns the reality and units out to search out his organic father (who by no means knew he existed). A trek to New York Metropolis – in elf garb and with a childlike demeanor that, oddly sufficient, the opposite grownup elves don’t appear to retain – brings in regards to the anticipated developments as Buddy charms the cynical metropolis people (McKinley directs his forged to talk within the broadest Nu Yawk accents doable) along with his joyous Christmas spirit, although dad (Michael Hayden) is a more durable promote. A rich, workaholic writer of youngsters’s books, Walter Hobbs isn’t fairly the “squeezing, wrenching, greedy, scraping, clutching, covetous outdated sinner” of Dickens, however he’ll do for now.
Principally Walter is only a unhealthy dad, emotionally distant from his loving spouse, 10-year-old son (the aforementioned Brown and Edgar) and, now, his new elf-son, who makes a multitude of issues at dad’s workplace simply when the vacation work crunch is most demanding.
There’s additionally a love curiosity (Kayla Davion, one other powerhouse vocalist), a persnickety boss (Kalen Allen) at Macy’s, the place Buddy briefly lands at gig at Santa Land; and, in fact, Santa himself (a terrific Sean Astin, having what appears to be the time of his life, not least when he will get to make a cute joke about Lord of the Rings).
With a cheerful ending assured – it’s a Christmas story, in spite of everything – Elf depends much less on plot (which there’s an excessive amount of of) and extra on tinsel, lights and sweet cane spectacle. On that stage, this manufacturing, which has been staged to packed homes for the previous two vacation seasons in London, is fitfully profitable. Tim Goodchild’s set design begins on the chintzy aspect, with, for instance, Santa, on an in any other case naked stage, sitting on a throne that wouldn’t move muster at most procuring malls, and Buddy using off on a refrigerator-sized iceberg (Ian William Galloway’s cartoony, largely charming video projections pull a whole lot of weight).
Kai Edgar and Henson
Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
The set design comes into its personal throughout the huge Macy’s Santa Land scene and, later, a snowy finale (it’s fairly clear the place this manufacturing spends its cash), and Goodchild’s costume design is powerful all through (even when its not at all times clear precisely what decade we’re presupposed to be in). Liam Metal’s choreography is sufficiently energetic, even often witty (as with some sly Fosse references throughout the “No one Cares About Santa” quantity carried out as a Christmas Eve late-night gathering of sad-sack newly out-of-work Clauses).
All through the manufacturing, the sprightly dancing, to not point out Henson’s inexhaustible excessive spirits, provides some kick to a nice if largely unremarkable rating. Songwriters Sklar and Beguelin would, after Elf, go on to compose the a lot superior The Promenade. We owe them a sugar plum for that alone.
Title: Elf The Musical
Venue: Broadway’s Marquis Theatre
Director: Philip Wm. McKinley
E book: Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin
Music: Matthew Sklar and Chad Begueli
Solid: Gray Henson, Sean Astin, Kayla Davion, Michael Hayden, Ashley Brown, Kai Edgar, Jennifer Sanchez, Kalen Allen, Michael Deaner
Working time: 2 hr 30 min (together with intermission)
