Elf The Musical, with a book by Tony winners Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and Thomas Meehan (The Producers), music by Matthew Sklar (The Wedding Singer), and lyrics by Chad Beguelin, (The Wedding Singer) is a musical comedy based on the 2003 holiday film of the same name. The original film starred Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel, and quickly became a Christmas classic. The musical brought together the vintage comic styles of Martin and Meehan with the high-energy contemporary music of Sklar and Beguelin.
Elf premiered on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on November 24, 2010, after an industry reading the year before. It ran for a limited engagement during the holiday season until January 2, 2011, after 57 performances. The next holiday season in 2012, the production company NETworks launched a "mini-tour" of the musical, traveling all the way from Rhode Island to Florida.
With a large success from the original production, Elf returned to the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on November 9, 2012. It ran until January 6, 2013, and contained a revised book and a completely new opening number. The changes in the musical carried through to two separate national tours that started in 2013, one union and one non-union. Outside of Broadway, the show has seen a fair amount of engagement. The 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle produced its first regional production, while the Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia housed the international premiere.