‘Mamma Mia’ a loud, crowded party at CT Rep

Have you ever attended a wedding party without having gone to the wedding? The sentimental, emotional bits have happened hours before, and people have just been getting sloshed, insensible and furiously frolicsome.

That’s the sense you get from Terrence Mann’s production of the ABBAfueled musical frolic “Mamma Mia,” which opens the two-show 2019 Nutmeg summer series at Connecticut Repertory Theatre. It’s the disorienting feeling of watching other people having way too much fun and not really including you.

You might have thought that this corny romantic comedy, with its ‘70s pop score and a contrived plot about a young woman named Sophie who uses her wedding day to solve the mystery of who her father is, couldn’t really get more over the top. But CT Rep finds whole new ways. The production’s obstreperous tone overwhelms UConn’s Harriet S. Jorgensen Auditorium. The dance numbers are crowded and dangerous, with a lot of kicking and elbow-jutting.

The songs are brash and shouty, like the cast is trying to hear themselves doing karaoke in a noisy bar. The shoutiest of them all, strangely, is Kelly McCarty as the usually sensitive young Sophie. McCarty delivers “What’s the Name of the Game?” as if it’s a real question she demands the answer to. Even her love songs sound like angry confrontations.

Sweetness is sorely lacking. Songs are butchered, with an inexcusable amount of bum notes and out-of-step harmonies. The production starts at a fever pitch and has nowhere else to go. It just gets more obnoxious.

After umpteen tours over the past 20 years that slavishly followed the tem