Elf The Musical at a glance

Show
Elf The Musical
Book
Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin
Music
Matthew Sklar
Lyrics
Chad Beguelin
Director
Philip Wm. McKinley
Choreographer
Liam Steel
Set and costume design
Tim Goodchild
Lighting design
Patrick Woodroffe
Sound design
Gareth Owen
Video design
Ian William Galloway
Producer
Temple Live Entertainment
Venue
Aldwych Theatre, 49 Aldwych, London WC2B 4DF
London dates (2025/26)
28 October 2025 – 3 January 2026
Original premiere
14 November 2010, Al Hirschfeld Theatre, Broadway
First UK premiere
2015, Dominion Theatre (fastest-selling show at the venue since 1929)
Running time
Approximately 2 hours 20 minutes, including a 20-minute interval
Age guidance
All ages; recommended 5+
Cast
Joel Montague (Buddy), Carrie Hope Fletcher (Jovie), Aled Jones MBE (Walter Hobbs), Rosanna Hyland (Emily Hobbs), Martyn Ellis (Santa), Lucinda Lawrence (Deb), Dermot Canavan (Store Manager)
Based on
Elf, the 2003 New Line Cinema film directed by Jon Favreau, starring Will Ferrell
Notable songs
Sparklejollytwinklejingley, A Christmas Song, I'll Believe in You, Just Like Him, Nobody Cares About Santa

Retrospective Review: Elf The Musical at the Aldwych Theatre

4.3
★★★★☆

LTH Expert Rating

Reviewed retrospectively by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 13 May 2026.

The Verdict

Elf The Musical's 2025/26 Aldwych Theatre run was the production's fourth West End engagement and — in the considered view of most reviewers — its strongest. Joel Montague's Buddy met the production's central, surprisingly difficult challenge head-on: how to be guileless without being grating. Where some previous Buddys have leaned hard into yelp-and-bounce, Montague's reading was quieter, slightly bewildered, and warmer — a Buddy you actually wanted to spend two hours and twenty minutes with. Carrie Hope Fletcher's Jovie brought the kind of vocal authority that has made her one of the West End's most reliable musical-theatre leads, while Aled Jones MBE's Walter Hobbs traded on his recognisable warmth to good effect.

Philip Wm. McKinley's production — designed by Tim Goodchild, choreographed by Liam Steel — remains a polished, traditional Christmas-musical machine: bright lights, fast pace, snow falling on the audience, jokes for parents and jokes for children placed at sensible intervals. The Aldwych Theatre proved a stronger acoustic fit than the cavernous Dominion. Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin's songs — Sparklejollytwinklejingley, A Christmas Song, the second-act ballad I'll Believe in You — are tuneful rather than groundbreaking, and that suits the assignment. The ten-week run played to consistently strong houses and closed as scheduled on 3 January 2026.

What made it notable

  • Joel Montague's Buddy. The Hamilton and The Great Gatsby alumnus delivered what reviewers consistently called the best London Buddy to date — physically commanding, vocally strong, and crucially likeable rather than annoying. The performance is unlikely to be the production's last word on the role, but it raised the bar.
  • Carrie Hope Fletcher's Jovie. Fletcher (Les Misérables, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella, Calamity Jane) brought a vocal pedigree to a role that often gets played as a thin straight-foil. Her duets with Montague — A Christmas Song, Never Fall in Love (With an Elf) — were among the show's standout moments.
  • Aled Jones MBE's West End musical debut as Walter. Better known as a broadcaster and Songs of Praise presenter, Jones brought genuine star wattage to the dryer adult role of the workaholic Walter Hobbs. His Broadway-Soundalike was unexpectedly strong.
  • The Aldwych move. After three runs at the cavernous 2,000-seat Dominion Theatre, the move to the more intimate 1,200-seat Aldwych was widely judged to be the right call. The show's comedy beats and emotional moments both landed harder in the smaller house.
  • Philip Wm. McKinley's consistent staging. McKinley has directed every London run since 2015. The production has been refined over multiple engagements into something close to a Christmas-musical instruction manual: every number lands, every set change is invisible, every joke gets the response the staging is asking for.

Critical Reception (Aldwych Theatre, 2025/26)

The 2025/26 Aldwych run drew solidly positive four-star reviews. The Times, the Standard and the Stage all gave four stars, with the Times singling out Montague's performance. The Telegraph and WhatsOnStage also gave four. The Guardian and Time Out were slightly cooler at three stars, both acknowledging the production's professionalism while noting that the material is what it is — a populist film adaptation that does not aspire to be Sondheim. Audience response was overwhelmingly positive across the run.

  • The Times ★★★★
  • Evening Standard ★★★★
  • The Stage ★★★★
  • The Telegraph ★★★★
  • WhatsOnStage ★★★★
  • The Guardian ★★★
  • Time Out ★★★

Source: published reviews of the Aldwych Theatre run (October 2025 – January 2026). Star ratings indicative.

About the Production

What happens in Elf The Musical

The plot follows the 2003 film closely. As an orphan baby, Buddy crawls into Santa's gift sack during a Christmas Eve visit and is transported back to the North Pole, where he is raised by elves. By adulthood Buddy is six-foot-something, terrible at making toys, and increasingly aware that he does not fit in. Santa finally tells him the truth: he is human, and his biological father is a Manhattan publishing executive named Walter Hobbs. Buddy sets off for New York City to find him.

Walter, however, is a hard-driven cynic on Santa's permanent naughty list. His son Michael is starved of his father's attention, his wife Emily quietly disillusioned. Buddy arrives in Manhattan in his elf costume, gets bounced through a series of culture-clash set-pieces (a department store Santa display, a publishing office crisis, the Empire State Building observation deck), and gradually warms the people around him. He also meets Jovie, a sceptical Macy's elf, and falls in love. The crisis arrives when Walter rejects Buddy and Santa's sleigh breaks down in Central Park because nobody believes in Christmas any more. Buddy — and the people he has touched — restore Santa's flying ability through collective belief, and reunite the Hobbs family in the process.

The stage adaptation makes two notable changes from the film. First, Buddy's North Pole opening is compressed into a single song, allowing the show to get to New York fast. Second, the publishing-house subplot is built up into a full second-act sequence, giving Walter a Broadway-style emotional arc. The result is a slightly more conventional musical-comedy shape than the film, but the spirit and the gags are intact.