If you’re already missing panto season then fear not: Elf, a stage musical based on the 2003 Will Ferrell film about one of Santa’s helpers, will arrive in London in winter 2015. The show, previously staged in Plymouth and Dublin in 2014, has a book by Tony award-winners Thomas Meehan (Annie) and Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone), with songs by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, and direction and choreography by Morgan Young.
Directed by Jon Favreau, the 2003 film starred Ferrell as Buddy, an orphan who has been raised as an elf in the North Pole after sneaking into Santa’s sack one Christmas when he was young. Wide-eyed, full of love and not exactly expert at toy-making (“I’m a cotton-headed ninny-muggins”), Buddy heads for New York, where he meets his father (James Caan) and falls in love with an employee (Zooey Deschanel) at a Santa’s grotto in a department store.
When the musical version of Elf opened on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld theatre in 2010, the New York Times critic Charles Isherwood deemed it “tinseled in synthetic sentiment, performed with a cheer that borders on mania, and instantly forgettable”. Nevertheless, it returned to the same theatre for another run two years later.
Casting details for the London production have not yet been announced. Previews for Elf start at the Dominion theatre in London on 24 October 2015. The show runs for 10 weeks and opens officially on Thursday 5 November.
