After taking the movies by storm in 2003 and winning Broadway’s heart seven years later, Buddy The Elf has traveled by iceberg to Long Beach to offer Musical Theatre West audiences the season’s most delightful musical treat for grown-ups and kids alike.

 Like the Will Ferrell movie smash on which it is based, 2010’s Elf The Musical opens at the North Pole, where Santa (Bryan Dobson) has raised the now 30-year-old Buddy (Matt Owen) to remain blissfully clueless to his human nature despite towering over his Munchkin-sized fellow toy makers.

Then one fateful day, a fellow elf’s slip of the tongue reveals the truth.

Buddy is the love child of the now deceased Susan Wells and the still alive-and-kicking children’s book publisher Walter Hobbs (Mark Edgar Stephens), whose life-consuming job leaves little at-home time for wife Emily (Kim Huber) and 12-year-old son Michael (Travis Burnett).

 At Santa’s suggestion, Buddy heads south to Manhattan in full Elf regalia, showing up unannounced and unwelcome at Dad’s Empire State Building office before ending up in Macy’s toy department, whose staff Buddy finds woefully apathetic, that is until he convinces them that the place needs a “sparklejollytwinklejingley” makeover.

 While there, Buddy meets (and falls quickly head over heels for) store employee Jovie (Ashley Moniz), a gal who could give the Grinch a lesson in bad attitude but whom Buddy finds positively irresistible.

Considerably more resistible is Macy’s Santa, whose fake beard and smelly breath so outrage our “elfin” hero that he must be police-escorted out of the building and over to Walter’s deluxe apartment in the sky, where he soon charms both stepmom and half-bro if not dear old dad.

 When Buddy throws an unintentional wrench in Walter’s latest attempt to come up with a Christmas bestseller, only a Christmas miracle can give our towering hero the happy ending he so richly deserves.

Tony-winning book writers Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and Thomas Meehan (Annie, The Producers, Hairspray) make sure that “family-friendly” doesn’t mean “adult-unfriendly,” packing their humor-and-heart-filled book with one-liners bound to elicit grown-up chuckles while flying high over kiddies’ heads.

 Matthew Sklar’s melodies are every bit as catchy as those that scored him a Tony nomination for The Wedding Singer, and lyrics don’t get any cleverer than fellow Wedding Singer Tony nominee Chad Beguelin’s. (Indeed my only gripe is that the version licensed to regional theaters like MTW doesn’t follow the National Tour’s example and start the show off with “Happy All The Time,” a major improvement over the lyrically lackluster “Christmastime.”)

Broadway’s Peggy Hickey choreographs some of the most show-stopping dances in town (from a knee-stomping “Christmastown” to some 42nd Street-ready tap to eight drunken Kris Kringles and one Chinese waitress complaining that “Nobody Cares About Santa”) while directing a stageful of effervescent performances along the way.

Triple-threat YouTube star Owen (of Matt’s Travel Tips fame) proves the ideal choice to fill movie star Ferrell’s curly-toed elf shoes, giving us a Buddy so awkwardly, infectiously endearing that even the Grinch might be won over by his grown-up-little-boy charm and tuneful tenor.

 Following a decade of national touring, the captivating Moniz returns to SoCal to take Jovie from churlish to cheerful while showing off Broadway pipes in the torchy “Never Fall In Love With An Elf.”

Stephens’s all-work–and-no-play Walter, Huber’s warm-and-winning Emily, and Burnett’s pint-sized charmer of a Michael merit their own cheers as do Cynthia Ferrer’s wacky Deb, Richard Bulda’s harried Store Manager, Kevin Bailey’s grouchy Mr. Greenway, and (book-ending the show) Dobson’s sit-down comedian of a Santa.

 The multi-tasking Calvin Brady, Danil Chernyy, Quintan Craig, Maggie Darago, Sylvie Gosse, Veronica Gutierrez, Annie Hinskton, Adam Ledermon, Jenna Lea Rosen, Michael Starr, Katy Tabb, and Louis A. Williams, Jr. may for the most part be a good decade younger than a Broadway ensemble, but they prove themselves second to none in song and dance.

Child performers Rachel Beard, Annabelle Giambone, Daniel Peters, and Shane Selloria complete the cast to adorable effect.

Music director Dennis Castellano insures splendid vocals while conducting Elf’s Broadway-caliber pit orchestra.

 Scenic designer Paul Black’s colorful set pieces take us from the North Pole to Walter’s office to Macy’s to a high-rise Manhattan apartment, but it’s Hana Sooyeon Kim’s spectacularly colorful projection-design backdrops and David C. Woolard’s rainbow-hued rented costumes that make Elf a holiday treat for the eyes, particularly under Black’s vibrant lighting, with additional design kudos shared by Melanie Cavaness and Gretchen Morales (properties), Michon Gruber-Gonzales (wigs), and the ever pitch-perfect Audio Production Geeks, LLC (sound design).

Bill Burns is associate director/choreographer.

Kevin Clowes is technical director. Matt Terzigni is production manager. Shawn Pryby is stage manager and Michael Dotson is assistant stage manager.

I fell in love with Elf The Musical when its 2016 National Tour stopped in SoCal a couple of Christmases back, and it’s an honest-to-golly, holly-jolly holiday treat to see it again in Long Beach. Get ready for Buddy The Elf to steal your heart too.

Musical Theatre West, Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach.
www.musical.org

–Steven Stanley
November 30, 2018
Photos: Caught In The Moment Photography

Tags: Bob Martin, Chad Beguelin, Los Angeles Theater Review, Matthew Sklar, Musical Theatre West, Thomas Meehan