If you, a Broadway-going parent, have already worked through (or been priced out of) The Lion King and Aladdin , and are facing an age range too young (or antsy) for Cursed Child , Wicked , or Back to the Future but still want to see something fly through the air, Elf: The Musical is back. The show, in its third November-to-January engagement, has touched down at the Marriott Marquis to superserve a niche that’s specific but, judging by the sizable crowd and highly audible infant at my performance, definitely not unprofitable. It’s an opportunity to spend Yuletide at a production with the primary goal of being as palatable and inoffensive as possible.
The aim of conveying an actual idea in musical form is secondary. This Elf comes to us from London (maybe an early warning sign, musicalwise ), where its director Philip Wm. McKinley has stripped things down to their most basic, though not in any avant-garde fashion.
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 . Liam Steel’s choreography gestures toward pizzazz, with lifts and cartwheels and even a bit of tap, but it never overcomes the bareness of the blocking. The same goes for the cast members, who are generally working hard and making little headway.
As.
