Elf: The Musical at Asheville Community Theatre
The trend of popular films adapted into musical theater productions continues with the entertaining Elf: The Musical, currently on stage at Asheville Community Theatre.
Featuring a book by Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin, and songs from the team of Matthew Sklar (music) and Chad Beguelin (lyrics), the show intelligently walks the line between familiar and fresh, making necessary changes to fit the medium. In turn, it proves an excellent fit for the ACT stage as director Jeff Catanese and his crew make smart use of the space, crafting an active show that sustains viewer attention — and holiday-centric smiles.
The creativity is evident from the opening framing story told by Santa Claus (a believable Scotty Cherryholmes) from his recliner before in-laws visit on Christmas Day. And the show quickly hits its cheery groove through the magnetism of Carson Fox, who has a terrific face and energy for the part of Buddy the Elf.
Inventive perspective choices by Catanese convincingly make the elves look far smaller than Buddy — with help via the first of many assists from Ida Bostian’s costumes — and young Clara Ivey is hilariously confident as middle manager elf Tiara.
It’s a winning tone and continues after Buddy discovers he’s actually a human. In one of the show’s best transitions, the director employs shadow theater to convey Buddy’s dreams of meeting his father, Walter Hobbs (Nathan Dibben), for the first time, then effortlessly slides to a bustling New York City where our hero gets to flex his fish-out-of-water charms against some of Jill Summers’ most impressive sets yet at ACT.
Buddy’s subsequent scenes with his dad, step-mom Emily (Rachel Dibben), and half brother Michael (Paige Gorczynski), and Buddy’s (way to fast) courting of department store co-worker Jovie (Zoe Zelonky) follow Elf the film’s plotting faithfully — to the point that a juncture that falls fairly late in the move is reached and it seems like things might wrap up within a single act over the next 20 minutes.
Instead, intermission arrives and it’s difficult not to feel dubious that enough material remains to justify Act II. Yet from the bar-set “Nobody Cares About Santa,” featuring a stage-full of disgruntled seasonal workers ably handling Rose Pillmore’s intricate choreography, the energy picks back up and gives way to a series of showcases for the individual stars, none better than Zelonky’s rendition of “Never Fall in Love.”
Though it’s still tough to buy the suddenness with which Walter’s heart thaws — the film suffers from a similar issue — these second-act numbers nicely build out the core players beyond the film’s paper-thin characterizations, and also allow Jack Heinen to steal his handful of scenes as Walter’s publisher boss, Mr. Greenway.
Sprinkled in is a fair amount of amusing innuendo that raises the question of the intended audience age range for Elf: The Musical. While the 7:30 p.m. start time inspired a good number of restless youngsters and a few early walk-outs within the opening night crowd, the wealth of accessible one-liners, visual humor, and ear-worms like “The Story of Buddy the Elf” should be enough to sustain family-wide attention.
ACT hustled hard with this production, going so far as to recruit the cast for a float in the recent Asheville Holiday Parade, and, as a result, the entire run was sold out before opening night. As such, advice shifts from “go buy a ticket” to “keep a look out for announcements of seats becoming available,” but the strong recommendation for the show remains regardless.
Elf: The Musical runs through Dec. 18 at Asheville Community Theatre. For details and tickets, visit ashevilletheatre.org.
(Photo courtesy of Studio Misha)
