MAMMA MIA! MY DREAM NIGHT AS A WEST END SUPER TROUPER
Lifelong Abba fan ANDREW PIERCE loves the musical so much he’s seen it 20 times. This week he played a starring role and stole the show . . . for all the WRONG reasons!
as I waited in the tiny, stifling hot dressing room, with its illuminated vanity mirror and Abba music pounding through the walls, I paced up and down rehearsing and reciting my lines. All ten of them.
I had even been gargling warm salt water, taking advantage of the carton of sea salt which is apparently an essential prop in a theatre dressing room alongside the fake tan, feather boas, lipstick and cans of hairspray.
A sonorous voice came over the intercom. ‘Five-minute call for the wedding scene.’ A few minutes passed and by now my nerves were really jangling. ‘Andrew Pierce to the stage.’ That’s me. They were calling me.
In a nervous daze, I left the 4ft wide dressing room and was led through a maze of concrete corridors and stairs, past semi-naked actors peeling off, or hurriedly pulling on, their costumes in preparation for their next scene.
suddenly, in my mind, I was back at the end of Ramsgate pier in a talent show aged 12 singing The Hills Are Alive With The sound Of Music. That was the last time I performed in public.
Now I was making my debut on a much bigger stage, The Novello Theatre in London’s West End, which has previously been graced by the likes of Laurence Olivier, Maggie smith, Michael Crawford and David Jason.
I had bagged a cameo in the ensemble of the astonishingly successful Mamma Mia!, which many critics said would last only months, but has instead just celebrated its 19th year in the West End.
It features Abba hits worked into a feelgood plot about a young girl called sophie who is soon to get married on a Greek island where she and her fiercely independent mother, Donna, run a bar.
It’s the ultimate tale of love conquering all — with the added bonus of those glorious Abba songs.
And there I was, quivering with excitement, limbering up in the cluttered wing of the theatre with the rest of the chorus.
I was talking too much and probably too loudly as I desperately tried to take my mind off the next six and a half minutes.
WOuLD I remember the words to: I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do (hardly the most exacting lyrics)? Would I sit in the right chair? What if I freeze? What exactly is stage-fright? And what am I going to do if it grips me?
Then we were on. I linked arms with Tabby Camburn, a professional actress and a very welcome steadying presence, and walked on to the stage for the wedding of sophie and her fiance sky on their sun-kissed Greek island.
The stage was bathed in dazzling bright light. The orchestra was in full flow, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they were playing.
One thing I did hear was a small but perceptible cry of ‘Oh God’ from the direction of the Dress Circle.
some of my friends who were up there had just realised why I hadn’t taken my seat next to them. They’re still laughing about it. Not least because I managed to singlehandedly rewrite the plot.
In the show, Donna, played by sara Poyzer, is a proud single mother who has brought up sophie alone. But as she prepares for her wedding, sophie discovers her mother’s diary which reveals she had a fling with three men who could all be her father.
sophie, played by the delightful Georgina Castle, secretly invites all of them to the wedding.
As the wedding service begins, Donna rises to her feet to announce that sophie’s Dad is in the church. At which point all three of them stand up. unfortunately, so did I. suddenly, sophie had four potential fathers with me, the extra, unexpected one — who also happens to be gay, just to complicate matters further.
Mercifully, my humiliation was only fleeting as Tabby swiftly jerked me back into my chair.
This was proving to be more nerve-wracking than my own civil partnership ceremony.
My friends maintain I did it on purpose to try to steal the limelight. It’s not true, honest. Fortunately, there was no time to be mortified as the pace of Mamma Mia! is utterly relentless.
I was soon up on my feet chanting a hymn, then back in my seat, moving off stage, returning to another chair, and up again for a couple of verses from I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.
Finally, I was hauled to the front of the stage for a photograph with the Vicar, played by Mark Isherwood, and then I was done. I could start breathing normally again.
I was punch-drunk having been in love with Abba since, as a 13-year-old, I was watching the 1974 Eurovision song contest at home alone on my parents’ new colour television in our swindon council house.
Abba burst on to the stage. A bust of Napoleon was flashed above them. A blonde bombshell called Agnetha was wearing a blue cap and pantaloons, Frida a cowboy shirt and vertiginous platform heels. Benny was on an upright piano, Bjorn was playing a star Wars guitar.
They won with Waterloo, and I was hooked. Abba even replaced the poster on my bedroom wall of the swindon Town football team, which overcame great odds to beat Arsenal 3-1 at Wembley in the long forgotten 1969 League Cup final. My first love affair had started.
I saved money from my saturday job in the local greengrocers to
buy all Abba’s records. I saved up for Abba’s only two concerts in Britain in 1977. There was a stampede for tickets. They could have filled the Albert Hall 580 times over. I never got one. I’m still devastated.
Travelling from Swindon to London to try to catch a glimpse of the band was another failure. Abba-mania was in full swing.
I hardly saw a thing as the streets were thronged with thousands of other young screaming fans.
By the time the band broke up in 1982, Abba rivalled Volvo as Sweden’s most successful export. So, when Mamma Mia! opened in London in 1999, I was at one of the first performances, and I have a confession to make: I have been to see the show at least once a year ever since.
At the fifth anniversary performance, Prince Charles and Camilla were in the audience. I barely gave them a second glance as Frida, Benny and Bjorn were there.
I talked to all three at the aftershow party and Frida kissed me on the cheek.
I never thought it could get any better than that. Until the other night that is. My role in the wedding scene was thanks to Judy Craymer, the show’s creative genius.
Mamma Mia! was her idea. She persuaded Benny and Bjorn to let her use Abba songs, and even sold her home to help finance the production.
The stage show alone has now grossed $2 billion, having been performed in 16 different languages — including Mandarin — making it one of Britain’s most successful theatrical exports. The film version starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, also produced by La Craymer, is one of the biggest box office successes of all time.
My part in this long-running success began a few years ago when I went to see the show as Judy’s guest, and in a restaurant afterwards, fuelled by one gin and tonic too many, performed an impromptu version of Voulez-Vous while standing on a chair, to the bemusement of the other diners.
The next day I had a message from Judy: ‘I had no idea you were such a natural. If only I had known, I would have cast you in the first production.’ We became firm friends and, as the 19th anniversary of the stage show approached, and with the sequel film, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, opening in July, Judy suggested that for one night only I should be the 34th member of the cast.
I jumped at the chance. My first appointment was with the wardrobe department, which has around 3,000 costumes which are shipped to productions across the globe. I saw the bright pink suit and feared the worst.
They were adamant it had to be pink with a purple floral shirt, and I detected the mischievous hand of Judy Craymer. My friends fell about laughing when I told them. ‘Course it’s pink,’ they said. ‘You’re gay and you love Abba.’
I was cheered up no small amount when I was told that the suit, usually worn by another member of the cast who is in his 20s, needed only one or two minor adjustments as my waist size hasn’t altered in 30 years.
Next, I went to see Marcus Savage who has been musical director since 2004. As a youngster, I sang falsetto. I tried it again. The look of pained anguish on Marcus’s face after my first song stuttered to a croaky halt will never leave me.
‘Perhaps we can go deeper,’ he gently suggested. He looked only marginally less likely to have a nervous seizure when I tried the baritone approach.
Marcus packed me off with some homework which I attacked with gusto, clambering on to a kitchen chair most nights to practise my verses until I was word perfect.
Then the next big milestone on my journey to the stage arrived, another rehearsal with Marcus.
He insisted he would give me more than five out of ten, although he pointedly never said how many more. I think we know why.
Then I was thrust into the capable hands of Robert Knight, the Dance Captain. I panicked at the words ‘Dance Captain’.
Judy had sent me a message earlier in the day saying: ‘Swing those hips.’ Suddenly they started to make sense. But surely I couldn’t be expected to dance?
The singing alone was trouble enough. My eyes swivelled wildly looking for an exit.
LUCKILY it was a false alarm, and Robert was merely there to walk me through my paces. The clock was ticking and the first real stage of my transformation into bit-part actor came when a microphone was fitted into the back of my hair.
The wire was then taped around my chest under my shirt. Each individual mic is controlled at the back of the stalls via the mixing desk. I was convinced mine would be switched off the moment I started singing.
Then I was in the capable hands of Rick Strickland, the hair and make-up supervisor who, with a knowing look, sighed: ‘I think we’ll need a whole tube of this.’ It was concealer for blemishes and facial lines. If only the rest of me had changed as little as my waistline over the past three decades.
Finally, Charlie Richard, the deputy in the wardrobe department, put me in my costume complete with bracelets and necklaces — neither of which I have ever worn in my life.
A whistle blew, and that was the sign the house was open.
I was being saved for the second half so I watched from the wings as there was a blast of the opening bars of I Have A Dream and a smooth-voiced Tannoy message: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, for those with a nervous disposition, please be aware that white Lycra and platform boots feature heavily in this production.’
At the end, forgiven for my blunder, I was allowed to take a bow in the encore. In the finale they were singing Dancing Queen. ‘You can dance/you can jive/having the time of your life...’ I certainly had the time of my life.
Now I’m waiting by the telephone to see if I get another call.
I fear I may have a long wait.