The Elves and the Shoemaker

Length: about 10 minutes.

In rhyming couplets, with opportunities for audience participation.

Available from Lazy Bees Scripts

This is the tale of an honest, elderly couple who scrape a living from their shoe-making business. But their greedy landlord, Mr Boot, wants more money. One night the couple leave some leather out on the bench, ready for sewing the next day. In the morning, they find that the leather has been turned into a pair of exquisite new shoes. The same happens the next night – and the next – and so on. Who could be doing this? It is not till the end that the couple meet their benefactors, the Elves – but only as “Elf and Safety” intervenes.

This dramatisation finds every possible pun on shoes and shoe-making.

Seven characters: Mr Cobbler, Mrs Cobbler, Mr Boot, Mr Elegant, Elf 1, Elf 2, Narrator.

This script has been performed in the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Bermuda, and the Netherlands.

Mrs Cobbler: The boot is on the other foot!

In fact it is our plan to put

You out of business, and buy you out!

Mr Boot: (less confidently) You're doing well, there is no doubt -

Mrs Cobbler: There's just one thing to say to you. 

And that, my friend, is this: SHOO!