‘How the Swedes perfected karaoke on a Greek island’
A jukebox musical woven together as a showcase for songs by Abba,
Mamma Mia! hits all the anticipated emotional notes. Even if it feels a bit cringe and leans heavily into predictability.
Mamma Mia! is a bit like karaoke. Better than the average night of karaoke, though, because in this version every song is by Abba and you in the audience are in no danger of being made to sing next.
Since its inception in London in 1999, the show’s always been a kind+ of build-up to the extended curtain call, when a medley of Abba favourites doubles as an opportunity for the audience to dance in the aisles, sing and clap along, even get up on stage with the cast.
Abba is, of course, all about a feeling, a disco-era mood with catchy tunes and an identifiably nostalgic spirit.
Those Swedes knew how to craft a hook, and their orchestrations have a soaring, epic quality that produces the sort of stirring music you feel you can drift away on. Their songs are like reliable companions, ones that provide a quick connection with happier times.
Which is perhaps why the indulgent silliness and the kitsch emotional excesses of the show still seem to work so well. When I watched it in Cape Town’s large Artscape Opera auditorium last month, it was packed to the rafters with a delighted, mostly adult crowd, and their exhilaration and delight were tangible.
Before Mamma Mia! was created in 1999, Abba’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus had already collaborated on the politically-themed
Chess, one of those great musicals that never quite became the box office hit it deserved to be. Together they wrote the music for Chess and Ulvaeus co-wrote the lyrics with theatre legend Tim Rice, who also penned the story.
Mamma Mia! was, by contrast, written as a holder for popular songs, many of which had already been smash hits. It took some wily writing, manipulative coaxing of emotions and a clever sense of story to drive up the stakes and craft a plot that could sensibly cause its characters to break into song.
If I’m a sucker for sentiment, I’m in good company. Meryl Streep, who plays Donna in the 2008 film adaptation of Mamma Mia! says she fell in love with the stage show when it opened in New York because she watched it with her daughter and it was the first time she saw her smile after 9/11.
The show was in fact the first new musical to open on Broadway after the terrorist attacks. It was, for many New Yorkers, their first reprieve, their first opportunity to experience joy, the first reason to smile and laugh and dance in the aisles after what was inarguably the worst tragedy in the city’s history. The show became the city’s feel-good sensation at a time when it needed it more than ever.
And it’s still a global phenomenon, having been performed in more than 60 countries.
Its power, of course, is its utter focus on generating that feel-good response, its ability to remove one, for a couple of hours, from your current reality and tilt the axis of your world to experience levity, delight, and the awesomeness of seeing and hearing songs you recognise, being performed in the context of a story you know is silly but that nevertheless melts your heart.
That is why Cape Town, and Johannesburg audiences have been losing their minds over Mamma Mia! It demands nothing of the audience besides its full and unabashed surrender.
If you give in to that desire for mindless escape, you will probably overlook the nitty-gritty details and chant “thank you for the music” while standing during a prolonged, roof-raising ovation. — Daily Maverick. • Mamma Mia! Is now showing at Teatro at Montecasino in Johannesburg until May 3. Tickets are available from Ticketmaster.