Theatre

Elf, Three stars

Dominion Theatre, London

William Russell

Witty tuppence-coloured sets by Tim Goodchild with lots of back projections and a flying sledge for Santa; splendid brassy orchestrations by Doug Bestermen of Matthew Sklar's in-one-ear and (fortunately) out-of-the-other songs; and a clutch of knock 'em dead in the aisles performances by several old pros - Joe McGann, Jessica Martin and Jennie Dale making the best of a bad job - are some of the reasons for seeing this musical version of the 2003 Will Ferrell movie.

It is about a baby called Buddy, abandoned in Santa's sack by his single parent mother, who is dying. He ends up being reared by Santa's elves until he becomes much too big to stay with them at the North Pole and goes back to New York to find his father, a grouch naturally, who now has a wife and small son. Buddy being simple-minded, much confusion follows until it all ends happily.

The difficulty here is that Ben Forster, who plays Buddy and is hardly ever off stage, while very talented, is not one of nature's Buttons. In other words one does not love him enough, which spoils the whole thing. The show surfaced last Christmas in Plymouth and will no doubt surface again elsewhere in the United Kingdom in years to come, so be warned. It is very efficiently staged, but never provides any reason for not buying the dvd of the Ferrell movie and taking the kids for a slap up pizza meal instead. The souvenir programme alone costs a wallet-shattering £10.