Tucson gets early Christmas gift with ‘Elf the Musical’

And that means the debate resumes over the best holiday films of all times.

Ask Jack Ducat, and he’ll tell you it’s watching Will Ferrell bumble and stumble his way around an unfamiliar life in New York City in “Elf.”

Of course, Ducat is admittedly biased.

“I used to watch ‘Elf’ every single year with my family. I still do watch it every single year with my family when I'm not on the road,” said the 23-year-old actor, who has another reason to be biased.

For the past two holiday seasons, he has played Buddy the Elf — the character made famous by Ferrell in the 2003 film — in the Broadway tour of “Elf the Musical.”

Broadway In Tucson brings “Elf” to Centennial Hall for a five-day run Tuesday, Nov. 10 through Sunday, Nov. 15.

The tour will hit only nine West Coast cities from early November through early January, which makes the Tucson stop — the third on the tour — a hot ticket.

This is the first time the show has come here, and there’s a good chance it will be the only time given the short window that the show tours.

“Elf the Musical” follows the story from the film: Buddy grows up at the North Pole with Santa and is led to believe he is an elf like everyone else who works with Papa Elf in Santa’s workshop. Until the truth comes out and he’s sent to New York to meet his birth father, a rich children’s book publisher.

“It's still really a coming of age story about Buddy the Elf meeting a family who never knew him and finding love and acceptance for one another and all of the comedy and antics that everybody knows and loves that come with this man who thinks that he's an elf,” said Ducat, who landed the role last year months after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“Elf” was Ducat’s first big show and first tour, and it earned him mixed reviews. Some critics compared his performance to that of Ferrell, while others said Ducat did a good job of maintaining the essence of the character Ferrell created while making it his own.

“There's parts, there's lines where I'm like, this is very specific and it's written very specifically, and I I try to bring some of that,” said Ducat, who performed the musical 50 times in its 2025 run. “But I'm bringing a lot of myself to it, as well. I'd say it's it's kind of a mix.”

One thing Ducat said he shares with the Buddy character is his self-professed dorky personality.

“I'm a giant goofball, and yeah, I'm clumsy and silly,” he said. “I've idolized this show and I've idolized Will Ferrell as an actor since I was very young and he's one of the reasons that I wanted to become an actor.”

Ducat said slipping into a Christmas scene night after night keeps him in the holiday spirit long before Santa shimmies down his family’s Indiana chimney. But what really sparks his holiday mood is meeting young audience members after the show and seeing how the show has impacted them.

“When I walk out of the stage door, I have kids telling me what they want for Christmas,” he said. “I have families who are getting to experience something really fun together. I get to watch all of these children and these families light up from this show.”