Elf: The Musical

The Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage to December 31, 2023
Tickets from $39 at 604-687-1644 or www.artsclub.com

Posted November 19, 2023

Is it silly? Of course it is: a baby boy crawls into Santa’s sleigh one Christmas morning, is taken to the North Pole where he’s raised by Santa’s elves. At age thirty and twice the size of everyone on the toy-making floor, Buddy thinks he’s an elf until he overhears a conversation and discovers he’s human.  Oh, no!

Santa tells him his mother has died but his father, Walter Hobbs (Andrew Wheeler), works in the Empire State Building. So off to NYC goes Buddy the Elf, still dressed in yellow tights, green tunic, curly-toed boots and a silly little party hat.

With book by Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin, music by Matthew Sklar and lyrics by Chad Beguelin, is this Arts Club production fun? Oh, yes! Is the set design  by Brian Ball fantastic? Absolutely. Lights by Itai Erdal? Bright and beautiful. Christine Reimer’s costumes? Amazing, especially the hilarious ones on Santa’s elves.  And there are tap-dancing Santas choreographed by Julie Tomaino. Live music is provided by Ken Cormier and his eight-piece band. What more could anyone ask of a Christmas show?

Elf: The Musical requires a totally charismatic performer as Buddy and director Stephen Drover went for the top of the line: Andrew McNee not only portrays Buddy, he convinces us he is Buddy: gangly, delightfully naïve, sweetly romantic, goofily awestruck at the ‘real’ world, saddened and then angered at the lack of Christmas spirit. There are people, Buddy finds out, who don’t believe in Santa. Every gesture, every look of bewilderment or happiness or amazement – McNee has it all. He gives us a Buddy we adore.

Layered on all of this is a romance for the grownups. It’s love at first sight for Buddy when he meets Jovie (Eva Tavares), a street-hardened, Santa-denying beauty. Although petite, Tavares has a voice that rocks the Stanley when she sings “Never Fall in Love With An Elf” after Buddy keeps her waiting two-and-a-half hours for their date.

It being a Christmas show, Buddy’s father Walter is a Scrooge-like character who, not at all surprisingly, has a change of heart just like Ebenezer. Wheeler’s Walter is gruff and mean and breaks Buddy’s heart when he hollers, “Get outta my life – forever!” There were those in the audience the night I attended who called out, “Aw” in sympathy for Buddy. And I don’t think they were kids.

And again, being a Christmas story, there’s family: Walter’s second wife Emily (Sharon Crandall) and Buddy’s step-brother Michael (Rickie Wang), a sweet-voiced youngster with an already impressive film, stage and tv resumé.

 

The character narrating this story is Santa himself. Tom Pickett makes a warm, slightly sly Santa – one who dodges Mrs. Claus when he wants to watch a ballgame on TV. He also confesses to forgetting New Zealand one Christmas. Bad Santa.

Actor Scott Bellis turns up in some surprising places and Elf: The Musical is one of them; he first appears as a souvlaki vendor on the NYC street and later as the super nasty Mr. Greenway. Bellis is one of those performers that, no matter how small the role, you can’t take your eyes off them. Plus he makes some weird and wonderful dance moves.

Meghan Anderssen, as Walter’s secretary Deb, is so fresh and funny with her killer laugh. She tap-dances up a storm, too. While skeptical at first about who Buddy is, Deb nevertheless is kind to him when everyone else is critical and dismissive. Right from the start, Deb embodies the spirit of Christmas.

And therein lies the show’s appeal: kindness, generosity of spirit and joy which is hard to come by these days. Indeed I felt some pangs of guilt as I left the theatre: here we are, safely tucked away in paradise, while wars wage elsewhere. What’s the message here? Celebrate what there is to celebrate while being completely mindful that we are blessed.