13 and Happy Days at the Goodspeed

This may come as a shock to some, but there are opportunities to take in quality musical theater outside of New York City. I must confess a personal bias against regional productions, but this is just outright snobbery on my part. In an effort to ameliorate this injustice, I've been looking for opportunities to expand my musical horizons beyond the confines of Manhattan.

Toward that end, next month I'll be taking a road trip to the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. to take in two shows: Happy Days and Jason Robert Brown's 13. Yeah, I know: from the ridiculous to the potentially sublime. But I figure I owe it to my readers and my students to sample the full gamut of musical offerings. Of course, if it weren't for 13, I probably wouldn't be making the trip, but as I was ordering my tickets, I noticed that Happy Days would be playing the Goodspeed main stage on the same day. I figured, as long as I'm down there...

The world premier of 13 took place last year at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where the show met with mixed-to-positive reviews, with the best notice coming from Variety. From what I can glean, the show appears to be about the pressures of fitting in at that wonderful/terrible age of thirteen, but there do appear to be some rather melodramatic elements to the plot. JRB's body of work thus far has been pretty darned serious (Songs for a New World, Parade, The Last Five Years), but within those shows he has proven himself adept at crafting more light-hearted fare. Something tells me that, even though 13 is billed as a "musical comedy," there will be a very serious streak that runs through it.

After its LA engagement, 13 was then supposed to move to New York, but apparently JRB wanted to make some changes before that happened. Is this Goodspeed run another stop on the road to Broadway? Time will tell. The Goodspeed certainly has a time-honored tradition of producing shows that would later make it to New York, including Shenandoah, Annie, and Man of La Mancha. It's interesting to note that the Goodspeed production of 13 will have a new cast and creative team, although that doesn't necessarily mean that the original actors and staff got dumped. 

And then there's Happy Days. I must confess, I'm not expecting great things. The show has a book by Garry Marshall, who produced the original "Happy Days" TV series and wrote many of its episodes. The score is by Paul Williams. Yes, that Paul Williams. The short guy from the 70s and 80s who wrote the songs for "The Muppet Movie" and "Bugsy Malone." Talented guys, to be sure, but relatively untried in the realm of musical theater. The Goodspeed produced a workshop production of Happy Days last year. Now, after an apparently successful run at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the show returns to Goodspeed to open its current season.

Is Happy Days headed for a New York run? Something tells me it isn't. I have a feeling that Happy Days is going to find a very vibrant life in regional theater and then join the upper pantheon of shows that high schools do in rapid rotation: Grease, Bye Bye Birdie, Footloose, etc. But, then, I could be wrong. It's happened before.

I'll be seeing both shows on May 24th. Look for my reviews here shortly thereafter.