BWW Reviews: Paper Mill's ELF is Heavy on the Showbiz Fun

When the musical comedy based on the hit movie Elf first came to Broadway for a limited run in November of 2010, many anticipated a slapdash effort just good enough to draw in the crowd that would be attracted to a familiar name for their holiday theatergoing.

But the creative talents behind Elf have got some serious musical theatre chops. The funny and quirky book is a collaboration of Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and master craftsman Thomas Meehan (Annie, The Producers) and the snazzy score is by The Wedding Singer's pairing of lyricist Chad Beguelin and composer Matthew Sklar. Their upbeat, oddball and tuneful concoction has a contemporary attitude that's light on the seasonal sentiment, but heavy on the showbiz fun, and director Eric Ankrim's solid mounting at the Paper Mill Playhouse is bursting with brassy talent.

James Moye is an exuberant charmer as thirty-year-old Buddy, a North Pole resident whose towering presence over his fellow elves and ineptitude at toy-making comes from the fact that he's actually a human who, as an infant, accidentally hitched a ride on Santa's sleigh. When he finds out his mother is long dead and his dad, unaware he fathered a child with her, is a New York children's book publisher with a wife and son, Buddy takes his toothy grin and loveable sincerity to Gotham.

The fish-out-of water comedy may lean on the obvious (Buddy is obsessed with using the office paper shredder; can you guess what happens next?) but there are sharply funny moments throughout, like a rousing Christmas Eve chorus of dismay sung by newly-unemployed department store Santas.

Broadway favorites Robert Cuccioli, as Buddy's gruff workaholic dad, and Heidi Blickenstaff, as his sassy, neglected wife, may not have a lot to do but their professional polish is well-appreciated.

Narrating the evening is Paul C. Vogt, playing Santa Claus like a Borscht Belt comic dishing out the one-liners as he complains about his TiVo ("I see one show on global warming and they think I'm Al Gore.") and advises Buddy that the only real Ray's Pizza in New York is the one on 6th Avenue and 11th. (Sadly, that line now dates the piece.)

Sklar's music has its moments of traditional holiday cheeriness, which Beguelin occasionally peppers with eyebrow-raising rhymes ("The life here is so Christmas-y it's hard to grow up callous... And since I love St. Nick and the Aurora Borealis...") and there's one very sweet ballad where Buddy's young half-brother, Michael (a very good Jake Faragalli), writes a letter to Santa saying he'll believe in him if his father would spend more time at home. But there's also plenty of catchy Broadway jazz and swing for choreographer Josh Rhodes' terrific dancing ensemble. Though Kate Fahrner has an otherwise thankless role as the sullen young woman who catches Buddy's romantic eye, she does a great job of belting out the comical torcher "Never Fall In Love (With An Elf)."

More of a pizza-and-beer musical than a sugar plum confection, Elf is a fun night out, with or without the kids.

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