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Not one of the best of days
The whole cast come together to try to save Arnold's diner. Pictures: Paul Coltas Happy DaysGrand Theatre, Wolverhampton*** HAPPY Days - the musical is based on the
American television sitcom of the same name. It ran for ten years from
1974 and this somewhat cartoon and imagined vision of USA in 1950s
became one of the most successful TV shows of the 1970s. Now 20 years later the musical, written by the
series original creator Gary Marshall, does its best to recreate the
chemistry of that success but simply fails. If this had made it on to the screen back in the
80s it would have been at best passable as a story but as a big show
live resurrection of the brand and the spirit of the rock and roll era,
then the story and music falls far short of the potential it could have
easily had. Arnolds the Diner is central to the Happy Days
crew and when it’s threatened with closure, needing funds to avoid the
inevitable, the answer is to raise funds via a wrestling match. This is
to be between the very cool Fonz (Ben Freeman), now sporting an uncool
bad knee and his two former childhood bullies the Malachi’s. Add to this
Pinky (Heidi Range), a former love, who returns in time to see this all
go down and a few other minor character developments that seem
incidental to it all. However the great cast worked hard to breathe
life into every moment of this rather flat series of cameos and the show
does have a few good moments but those however failed to make a whole. What is forgettable is the music. The one time
award winning composer Paul Williams simply fails to create one
memorable song in the whole evening. Instead we have a series of ` do
wop’ pastiches that lyrically were hard to hear or understand. There was
one exception for short moment when former Buck Fizz member Cheryl Baker
who plays Mrs Cunningham, was given the chance singing What I dreamt
last night, and sounded great for around a minute only to have the
remainder of the song finished by another character. Ex Sugar Babes member Heidi Range as Pinky also
delivered a couple of nice melodies showing that she really can sing,
but again these were fleeting. Thankfully the Happy Days theme song written by
Gimble and Fox which remains an uplifting melody gave the evening some
degree of authenticity, being used in the open Number arranged into a
couple of other songs and as a hand clapping close. There were also some curious staging moments too
where a small opening in the curtain was used a several key points as a
porthole to view the narrow the stage action. This effectively meant
that for anyone not sitting directly in front of or above the curtain
gap could simply not see fully what was going on, on stage. Sound
designer Ben Harrison created a great live sound and one of the best I
have heard and the choreography by Andrew Wright was also well designed
and performed. It seems a real missed opportunity to have not built a better vehicle to resurrect the Happy Days brand than this. Whilst it’s all moderately good fun and a reasonable evening’s entertainment it pales into insignificance when compared to the several other touring’s musicals that are set in the 1950s that feature the original music of that era. To 14-06-14 Jeff Grant10-06-14
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