Santa Clauses are pretty interchangeable. The real Santa’s close friend Buddy the elf would disagree, but it’s true: Put on the red costume, hide behind the glossy beard, manage a few ho, ho, hos and anyone will do.
Buddy, though? That’s a much tougher role to cast — and not only because Will Ferrell made him such an indelibly adorable doofus in the 2003 movie “Elf.” In “Elf the Musical,” Buddy is the one character in whom we must absolutely believe: a full-grown man in a green elf suit with curl-toed boots, naïve and wonder-struck in the big city.
Get it wrong and it’s a recipe for cringe. Get it right and you’ve cracked the code of all-ages comedy, the kind that will leave children and grown-ups equally helpless with laughter.
In its latest Broadway outing, starring an exuberant Grey Henson in the title role, “Elf the Musical” has gotten Buddy delightfully, entirely right. From his first spoken line — the word Santa, cried joyously with what sounds like at least five exclamation points — he is enchanting in his silliness.
He cartwheels across the stage because why wouldn’t he? A trusting, uninhibited goofball, he lives in his body the way children do, nearly bursting with eagerness. But Buddy is 30; he can show you how many that is on his fingers, flashing what look like boneless jazz hands.
Henson, who was nominated for a Tony Award for his show-stealing turn as Damian in “Mean Girls,” makes Buddy utterly his own: sunny, darling, slightly unsettling. At the mention of tickle fights or snuggling, he emits a small noise that he doesn’t know is sexual, and moppets in the audience won’t either. That joke is aimed at the adults.
It’s a tonic of a performance — the kind that makes you smile later, just thinking about it. The trouble is that Buddy is trapped inside “Elf the Musical,” a creaky adaptation whose two-and-a-half-hour length seems designed less to maximize audience enjoyment than to ensure there’s an intermission that people can spend buying merch.
Directed by Philip Wm. McKinley at the Marquis Theater, and loaded with playful, energetic dance numbers (choreography is by Liam Steel), the musical largely follows the outline of the film. Buddy was a baby in an orphanage when he crawled into Santa’s bag of gifts one Christmas Eve and accidentally ended up at the North Pole.
Raised as an elf, he discovers in adulthood that he’s a human with a father in New York City — such a not-nice guy that he’s on Santa’s Naughty List. Buddy sets off to find him anyway.
As he leaves the North Pole on an ice floe, keep an eye out downstage for a charming appearance by the narwhal, bidding him goodbye. Less impressive: the video game-like scenery along Buddy’s journey, projected on the upstage wall. (The set is by Tim Goodchild, who also did the costumes. Video is by Ian William Galloway and Mesmer Studios.)
The show’s authors (Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin, book; Matthew Sklar, music; Chad Beguelin, lyrics) have impressive credits among them, notably “The Producers” and “The Prom.” The score is pleasant in an old-school way. But the parts of the show that don’t have Buddy at their center skew toward blandness.
That includes the scenes involving Santa, played by Sean Astin of “Lord of the Rings” fame. He seems awkwardly aware that his dialogue is stuffed with corn, with a strained reference to the streaming app Peacock at the top of the show, a mention of hobbits in New Zealand toward the end and assorted groaners in between.
Jovie (Kayla Davion), the co-worker Buddy swoons for when he inadvertently gets a job as a Christmas elf at Macy’s, is ill-considered by both production and script. Unlike Zooey Deschanel’s Jovie in the movie, who has a well-developed sense of silliness, Davion’s is a serious person. Buddy is such a toddler that it’s a wonder he doesn’t trade his elf suit for footed pajamas. Her reciprocating his romantic affection defies many, many laws of chemistry.
“Let’s make a pact,” Jovie tells Buddy. “If you try to be less elfy, I’ll try to be less bitchy.”
Buddy agrees: “OK. I’d like it if you’d be less bitchy.”
Way to teach the children, guys. And “less Scroogey” would have been a much more Christmassy line.
The plot strand about Buddy’s father, Walter Hobbs (Michael Hayden), his wife, Emily (Ashley Brown) and their young son, Michael (Kai Edgar) is, unfortunately, more than a bit of a slog. Deb, Walter’s secretary (Jennifer Sanchez), is fun, though, and so is the Macy’s manager (Kalen Allen) who mistakes Buddy for an emissary from corporate. Also cute: Santa in his sleigh, flying over the audience through snow that’s falling on us.
But Henson’s Buddy is the whole point here — the show’s reason for being, and the audience’s reason for going. On the island of misfit toys that is Manhattan, he is the most endearing one of all.
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