Get the latest gossip
Elf: The Musical, Where They Sing Really Loud for All to Hear
Everyone’s trying, but the show itself is a cotton-headed ninny-muggins.
Tim Goodchild’s rather thin set pieces are usually overshadowed, yet again, by a giant screen (the videos are by Ian William Galloway), giving you that sinking feeling of watching people try to act in front of a product display at Best Buy—a sensation that’s unfortunately become Marquis Theatre house style. As our hero Buddy the Elf—a human man raised on the North Pole, looking for his birth father in New York City, in case you’re unfamiliar with the 2003 film — Mean Girls and Shucked ’s Grey Henson is zagging toward fey whimsicality where Will Ferrell played something closer to an unbridled id. Chad Beguelin’s lyrics are witty—who would think of inserting a Rock of Gibraltar rhyme into an “I love my dad” number?—while Matthew Sklar’s melodies resemble skip tracks on a holiday jazz pop album you already have half-memorized.
Or read this on VULTURE