The gang's all back at Arnold's in Happy Days: A New Musical. The stage show was written by Garry Marshall, the creator of the original TV series.

TORONTO - For fans of Garry Marshall's oeuvre, recess is about to get a lot more lively.

Back in his glory days, Marshall, the populist genius behind such TV series as Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley suggested that for those who considered television educational, his shows would be recess.

And now, recess is coming to a theatre near you.

Happy Days: A New Musical is slated to open tonight at the Elgin Theatre, boasting a whole cast of familiar characters, new tunes by the Oscar-winning Paul Williams, and a book by Marshall himself.

The musical is the result of a five-year collaboration, Marshall says, as he prepares to head north from California for the Canadian premiere of his latest work.

A lot of that time was spent, he says, looking for the magic carpet that would carry the tale and all its characters from screen to stage.

"We were trying to get them to do more than the same thing," Marshall recalls. "Mostly it was in the area of romance. (On the series) we didn't want any of them to get married, so that's what we explore in the musical, because in a musical, you don't have to say it, you can sing it. It was a good way to have 'em grow, 'cause we were a little stuck with them in the series."

Romance? Happy Days? It all adds up to the Fonz.

"He's like a centrepiece in the musical," Marshall admits. "Fonzie's the big shot."

Not that there's anything new about that.

The Fonz's appeal has always been central to Happy Days.

Part of that can be credited to Henry Winkler, who originated the role, Marshall says, but there's more too.

"Underneath, I think in the '50s , it was not politically correct for men to lose it, so when we brought him on in the '70s, people remembered, guys used to be cooler.

"He was somebody that you wanted to be. He would pout and sulk like a child, but parents liked him because he had the right morals.

"The hardest part," he adds, "was to get him to sulk and pout in the musical."

In fact, since he left the world of series television, Marshall has had a lot of experience getting people to do things on stage that they don't normally do.

In addition to managing a Burbank theatre he co-owns with one of his three children, Marshall has turned his attention to directing opera.

When Placido Domingo decided to introduce film directors to opera and to opera audiences at the Los Angeles Opera, Marshall was one of the directors he approached.

"He said to me, 'You could do opera buffo. We need that,' " Marshall recalls. "So I said, 'You got any funny singers?' "

Judging from reviews of Marshall's staging of Jacques Offenbach's The Grand Duchess, Domingo had 'em -- and Marshall knew just what to do with them.

"That Frederica von Stadt -- she can deliver a line, I tell you," Marshall says. "She was terrific."

So was the experience.

"It was a different dynamic with the people," he continues. "I had 86 people on stage and I worked with these 86 people for four or five weeks, and never once did I hear from anybody's agent. It's all about the work, and all the opera I did was about the work.

"I would never touch the beautiful music, but during the scenes where there is no singing ..."

All in all, it's enough to keep Marshall on his toes. There's the theatre -- "If one of my kids was a doctor," he says, "I'd have a medical building, but they all went into showbiz." -- and the movies, the operas, the musical and, of course, the occasional acting gig.

"I'm doing more acting now because I'm the only one who didn't change my grey hair to black," he cracks.

And he still loves connecting with his audience.

"There's nothing like live, no matter what anybody says. Live still gives you the chills."

It's also a good way to take on things like corruption on Wall Street, he insists.

"Our slogan is, 'Forget Ponzi, come see Fonzie.' "

Sounds like recess has begun.