Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 2)"

The Dialtones sing one of their many, many songs in Happy Days: A New Musical.

I watch a fair amount of product review videos on YouTube, and recently, a channel I follow called Freakin' 2 tested out some novelty Easter candies. Among the items being reviewed were those Dr. Pepper-flavored Peeps you may have seen at the supermarket. I was especially interested in these because I'd tried them myself a few weeks ago and found them to be a decent facsimile of the popular beverage. But I don't really drink a whole lot of Dr. Pepper, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

The host of the Freakin' 2 video reached this conclusion: "I think occasional fans of Dr. Pepper will probably like it, but purists may not be convinced."

Well, friends, that's exactly my reaction to Happy Days: A New Musical, the show we're reviewing this week on These Days Are Ours. If you've seen a handful of Happy Days episodes and have a basic grasp of the characters and their relationships, the 2007 stage musical will probably be satisfactory to you. It's pleasant enough and doesn't overstay its welcome. But if Happy Days is burned into your brain because you've reviewed all 255 episodes, plus the animated series, the stage version may seem slightly "off" to you.

In other words, Happy Days: A New Musical is the Dr. Pepper Peeps of musicals. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Listen to our review of Act 2 and find out!

Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 1)"

The happy, happy cast of Happy Days: A New Musical.

When Howard Ashman and Alan Menken adapted Roger Corman's dark comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1960) as a stage musical in 1982, it was rather a novelty in the theater world. Stage shows based on movies weren't exactly unknown back then—think of Sondheim's A Little Night Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)—but generally the adaptation process went the other direction. Stage musicals became movies, not the other way around.

Nowadays, due to the success of movie-based shows like The Producers (2001), Hairspray (2002), and Spamalot (2004), it seems like every fondly-remembered pop culture property gets its own theatrical musical eventually. It's not surprising at all that Happy Days (1974-1984) would also get this treatment, especially since the long-running sitcom was already heavily influenced by the stage show Grease (1971). And so, in 2007, Happy Days: A New Musical debuted to generally positive reviews. It never reached Broadway but has become a rather popular choice for high schools and community theater troupes.

A few years ago, my cohost suggested we cover the Happy Days musical on These Days Are Ours, but I've been putting it off for some reason. Now that we've finished all eleven seasons of the sitcom and both seasons of the cartoon, it feels like it's finally time to cover the stage show, which has a book by Garry Marshall and songs by Paul Williams. That's an impressive pedigree. Does the show live up to it? This week on the podcast, we try to answer that question as we review Act 1.