Everyone needs a buddy Santa’s tallest helper moves from big-screen to stage By: Ben Waldman Posted: 5:07 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025

On a citywide publicity tour this summer to promote Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s tentpole Christmas production, Buddy the Elf had a private audience at city hall with Mayor Scott Gillingham, threw out the first pitch at a Goldeyes game, and nearly got tossed from his seat by an usher at Princess Auto Stadium for smuggling contraband into a midseason Bombers matchup.

After taking a swig from a bottle once filled with maple syrup, Ryan Brown pleaded his innocence.

“He’s yelling at me, ‘What’s in that bottle?’ and I’m like, ‘No, no, no. It’s just iced tea!’”

Brown’s explanation was likely a new one to the no-nonsense usher: he was getting himself into the character made famous by Will Ferrell in the 2003 comedy Elf, a seasonal classic that follows an oversized, sugar-loving holiday helper as he leaves Santa’s workshop to search for his true family in New York City.

After that initial brush with danger, Brown settled into character, fist-bumping fellow fans while chiding the referees with yuletide scorn.

“Santa’s gonna bring you a new pair of eyes for Christmas,” Brown shouted at the officiating crew.

Several months later, Brown is back in Winnipeg, playing Buddy on RMTC’s John Hirsch Mainstage, marking his provincial debut.

After playing the same role in 2023 at Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, the Toronto-based actor says he was excited to slip on the candy-cane tights once again.

“I had conversations with (director) Julie Tomaino because I wanted to make sure that this version of Buddy honoured the one I did before, but also to honour Will Ferrell,” says Brown, 35, whose first stage role came as a five-year-old playing Toto in a production of Wizard of Oz at Acting Out, the theatre camp his mom ran in the 1990s.

“Because if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

“I wanted to make sure that this version of Buddy honoured the one I did before, but also to honour Will Ferrell.”

The character — his energy, his innocence and his comic sensibility — has in the two decades since his screen debut earned a spot in the Christmas Movie Hall of Fame.

But when a team of Broadway titans came together to adapt the Hollywood film for stage, they knew Buddy was a gift even if the wrapping paper was worn.

“The movie is terrific, but it has a lot of flaws. The whole last half-hour it goes to hell. We’ve done a lot of work on that part, reconstructing it,” Thomas Meehan told Vanity Fair in 2010.

Meehan, a legendary librettist who died in 2017, knew a thing or two about successfully adapting existing IP: in 1977, he reimagined Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie comic strip for Mike Nichols’ Tony-winning production; in 2001, he joined up with Mel Brooks to bring The Producers to Broadway; and in 2007, he and Brooks reunited to give Young Frankenstein the same rejuvenation.

Like those other adaptations, Elf was a joint effort, with Meehan collaborating on the book with Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) to go with music by Matthew Sklar (co-creator with Martin of The Prom) and lyrics by Chad Beguelin (The Prom, The Wedding Singer, Aladdin).

Brown, who’s never written a full-fledged musical of his own, also looks to the movies as an inspiration for an eventual stage adaptation.

“The Goonies needs to be a musical. I have it all done in my head. The songs are all there. The truffle shuffle can be a whole tap-dancing number, and Goonies Never Say Die, obviously, would be the main theme of the show,” he says.

“I’m sure I’ve talked to hundreds of people about this. It needs to be a musical. I would see it, and I want to play Chunk. You can quote me.”

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca