Elf turns stage spectacular on the Mayflower stage

The show also boasts Santa’s flying sleigh, an audience snowball fight, an indoor snowstorm, a giant candy cane journey from the North Pole, aerial cirque stars – and Jordan Conway as Buddy the Elf, plus a book written by Bob Martin and Thomas Meehan (Annie, The Producers and Hairspray) and an original score by Matt Sklar and Chad Beguelin.

Jordan is finding it fabulous fun – but hugely demanding. And the audience are loving it.

“I was in Elf five or six years ago with another actor and we were the two cops, the least line-speaking principles and we've just built our parts up. I am now Buddy and he is now my dad! But it's fantastic because we’ve got a real chemistry and a connection and it's just very easy to act with him and it feels like a real dream.

“I started as Buddy last week in Milton Keynes and it's gone very, very well so far. We had a standing ovation last night and we're playing big arenas as well like Glasgow which has got 8,000 seats.”

As for his approach to the role: “I think if you were to try to do a carbon copy of Will Ferrell that would be completely the wrong angle. You have to have nods to what he created but you've got to make it your own. I'm considerably younger than he was when he did it so I've got youth and vulnerability on my side. I'm able to give it a bit more emotional depth. I play him as very happy and someone who takes everything at face value and it's just fun. I love playing him.”

And it’s great fun for the audience too, not least when they get given some big inflatable beach balls which serve as snowballs which they can then launch at the cast: “I also get to do an aerial strap act. My dad's background is circus and just being with him I've learned a few tricks but I would not say that I'm a circus performer. But I've just learned a few things over the years. The show is just great. We do a bit of everything. It ticks every box. It's sort of a musical and it's sort of a panto but it's also very much a drama. And it's also very filmic. It's got all the traditional panto values that we throw in but it's also got the music, an original score. It's very big bandy. We've got a lovely orchestra performing with us. It's very jazzy and there are a lot of words that makes some of it quite difficult for me!”

It all goes through to the second week of January after Christmas in Leeds and Hull on Boxing Day after which Jordan is planning to head off to the Maldives with his girlfriend: “This show is just full on and I'm shattered already and it's only week two. I've got to pace myself but it is just mental and it's just so much sweat and you are just working so hard so my plan is to go off to the Maldives in the New Year for a week!”