It’s not easy to rustle up much of the Christmas spirit on a drizzly Bonfire Night in London… which, in a way, is what Elf is about. When Buddy, a human raised in Santa’s workshop, learns that he is not a real elf after all and journeys to New York to meet his biological father, he persuades even hardbitten Big Apple-ites to show the seasonal spirit. It’s a bit Peter Pan, only instead of reviving Tinkerbell, this belief helps power Santa’s stalled (and reindeer-less) sleigh.

I have never seen Jon Favreau’s 2003 film on which this musical is based, and am embarrassingly unschooled in the work of its star Will Ferrell, but this show turns out not to be the calculated confection I was half-expecting, the kind of thing which manages at once to be overly sentimental and fundamentally heartless. True, Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin’s songs and Doug Besterman’s arrangements strive towards a jaunty golden-age feel without evidencing much of the classic in themselves. And wisecracking about various aspects of the show is like shooting fish in a barrel: how lucky, for instance, that Macy’s department store seems to recruit all its Christmas elves from resting musical-theatre performers. But there’s an infectious enjoyment to the proceedings.

Ben Forster as Buddy may seem to be on a permanent sugar rush (not surprising given what he says about the diet at the North Pole), but after a while – just like Buddy with his grouch of a children’s-publisher father – he wears you down and you end up smiling. Joe McGann as that father, too, gradually softens his flinty exterior, and Jessica Martin as stepmom is not uncaring, just a middle-class New Yorker. (The projected backdrops suggest that this could be Miracle On Central Park West.) Girls Aloud veteran Kimberley Walsh is the weakest link as love interest Jovie: her initial spikiness, transitional insecurity and final melting are all workmanlike rather than compelling. And yet, and yet, the bouncy script and the consciously ridiculous touches (a tap-dancing baby, I ask you!) end up working a kind of Christmassy magic, like traditionally awful cracker jokes. Maybe not ho-ho-ho, but nevertheless a hearty chuckle.

Written for the Financial Times.