HAPPY DAYS: A NEW MUSICAL AT THE BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME
Theatre Run: Tuesday 22 - Saturday 26 April 2014
Performance Reviewed: Tuesday 22 April 2014 (Press Night)
Reviewed by Kyle Pedley
Happy Days is something of an oddity to review and fully digest as a brand new musical production (something which, as its marketing repeatedly assures us, it is) given that it leans so heavily on nostalgia and formula to the point that it not only feels dated but also heavily derivative. It seems an unfair critique to labour over the antiquity of a show based on a 1970’s sitcom which itself was set 20 years prior, but there is very little trace of modernity, irony or invention to practically everything Happy Days offers. This may, of course, be precisely the point, owing to the TV series' original creator Garry Marshall having penned the shows book, and there is likely a fairly broad demographic who will get a kick from such a faithfully styled recreation of the hugely popular show being brought to the stage, but for the rest of us it’s difficult to shake the feeling that his has all been done and seen before with greater fire in its belly and punch in its execution. Take Grease, Footloose and a soupcon of Hairspray, blend them together whilst simultaneously diluting their respective character and vim, and you pretty much have Happy Days - a perfectly inoffensive yet not particularly effective simulacra of the feel-good, period musicals of yesteryear.
