Reviewed by Talia Carl­isle.

The tin­sel is untangled, the star per­fectly in place at the top of the tree. The only thing left is to make your way to BATS theatre to watch Pōneke’s own Pāua Bal­lads totally f*ck Christ­mas up – their word not mine!

There are naughty elves and a secret­ive Santa, squab­bling sib­lings and an abund­ance of beau­ti­fully wrapped presents just wait­ing to be torn apart. It’s a Christ­mas unlike your favour­ite Christ­mas movie, with the added bonus that it’s all impro­vised by Wellington’s top music­al impro­visers – their music­al bal­lads deli­ciously sprinkled through­out. This is JINGLE ELVES: THE MUSICAL. presen­ted by THE PĀUA BALLADS, on until Sat­urday so get your merry selves there pronto.

When I arrived on Wed­nes­day with a crowd of 14, the impro­visers wel­comed us all into the theatre with big grins and Christ­mas banter – a great­er wel­come than your own fam­ily could give, plus a bold Christ­mas crack­er of a song to start the show.

Com­edy roy­alty Megan Con­nolly and Wiremu Tuhi­wai set the stakes high from the start, play­ing Santa’s elves Snow­ball and Pock­et, who have run away from home and aren’t afraid of a kar­ate kid infused show-down. They’re not the only ones temp­ted to run away from Christ­mas, I am sure.

Pōneke improv celebrit­ies Mal­colm Mor­ris­on and Matt Hut­ton played dev­il­ish elf man­ager Fon­taine (Mal­colm) and preppy elf Sparkle (Matt) at odds over some dark hap­pen­ings going down at Santa’s work­shop.

Mor­al dilem­mas are rife through­out, with Beth­any Miller as Christ­mas Star hand­ling more than her share of dynam­ite on her first day work­ing for Santa.

There are some fant­ast­ic one liners for all our elf ears to enjoy such as “Mor­als are mal­le­able”, and my favour­ite answer to “what‘s going on?” when you know you’re in trouble…which is “Revolu­tion, destruc­tion and burn­ing all of the things all of the time” –  which sum­mar­ises the whole show to a TNT.

Glan­cing at first across the fest­ive and spark­ling set, I thought I saw Pāua Ballad’s Aus­tin Har­ris­on sit­ting in Santa’s chair and beard, how­ever I must have been blinded by tin­sel. The witty and tal­en­ted Isaac Thomas is not to be under­es­tim­ated as the wise and music­al sto­ic Santa who brings the trouble­makers back to what’s import­ant at Christ­mas time – fear­ing dis­ap­point­ing your loved ones – or in this case Santa.

The set and light­ing are stars on their own, with snow­flake and “Merry Christ­mas” pro­jec­tions, not to men­tion a sur­prise present each night for the impro­visers to incor­por­ate – nev­er know­ing what to expect. Just like the audi­ence!

If you are after a relax­ing fam­ily friendly show sure to put you in the giv­ing spir­it of Christ­mas, you are in the wrong place, my friend. But if you are after some laughs, some chaos and clev­erness, all set in Santa’s work­shop now brought into the 21st cen­tury – take a seat and a fire­crack­er and let’s get this dynam­ite spark­ing.