Mamma Mia Articles On Broadway!
Mamma Mia Companies Donate Money To WTC Funds
Theatre Review by Matthew Murray
October 19, 2001
Mamma Mia! Music and lyrics by Benny Andersson and Bj?rn Ulvaeus. Book by Catherine Johnson. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Choreography by Anthony Van Laast. Production designed by Mark Thompson. Lighting designed by Howard Harrison. Sound designed by Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitken. Cast: Louise Pitre, David W. Keeley, Tina Maddigan, Joe Machota, Judy Kaye, Karen Mason, Ken Marks, Dean Nolen, Tonya Doran, Sara Inbar, Mark Price, Michael Benjamin Washington.
Theatre: Winter Garden Theatre, 1634 Broadway between West 50th and 51st Streets
Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes, including one 15 minute intermission.
Schedule: Monday through Saturday at 8 PM. Wednesday and Saturday at 2 PM.
Ticket prices: $98.75, $83.75, and $60.00. Wednesday 2 PM - $93.75, $78.75, and $55.00. A $1.25 Facilities Fee will be added to the price of each ticket.
Tickets online: Tele-Charge
In terms of theatre, Mamma Mia!, which opened last night at the beautifully refurbished Winter Garden, has little to offer. The book by Catherine Johnson is paper thin, silly, and occasionally trouble in its story of twenty year-old Sophie (Tina Maddigan), about to marry Sky (Joe Machota), but who does not know who her father is. All she knows is that her mother, Donna (Louise Pitre), had flings with three men (Dean Nolen, Ken Marks, and David W. Keeley) over the summer of 1979. So, she does what any daughter would do and invites all three men to her wedding without telling her mother. Equally naturally, they come. That's about the extent of the setup of the show. There are a few predictable subplots, but little additional story. Most of the book's jokes and tension come not from the characters or the story, but rather from seeing exactly how it will set up the songs.
Then again, that's primarily what most people who go to see Mamma Mia! will be interested in - they want to see and hear ABBA's songs performed live. In this way, the show does not disappoint. The songs, written by Benny Andersson and Bj?rn Ulvaeus with some help from Stig Anderson, are almost all so familiar ("Dancing Queen," "Chiquitita," "Money, Money, Money," the title song, etc.) that you probably know most (if not all) of them already. That's a good thing, too, since the sound design, by Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitken, is so poor that most of the lyrics - especially in the group numbers - are rendered unintelligible. Equally as luckily, the volume is so high most of the time, you won't notice.
Even so, the songs are the true stars of the show, outshining anyone in the cast. That said, most of the performers are a mixed bag, with some decent (Machota, Nolen, Marks, and Keeley), some slightly more (Maddigan), and some a fair amount less (just about everyone else). Judy Kaye and Karen Mason though, in their small supporting roles, almost get the better of the music. When these abundantly talented professionals take center stage, especially in their big numbers in the second act, the show develops a different energy that is noticeably lacking the rest of the time. Their consummate experience and showmanship allow them to mostly overcome the deficiencies in the material that trap almost everyone else, and they look like they're having the best time in the world doing it.
Less can be said of Pitre in her far more significant role. Her dramatic range and vocal capabilities appear limited, and her performance spends most of the show hovering between annoyed and angry. What little success she has in putting across her songs, including her would-be showstopper, "The Winner Takes It All," comes primarily from the score, and the almost self-deprecating way the songs are shoehorned into the book. Her inadequacies become more painfully clear when teamed with Kaye and Mason; the book wants us to believe their three characters once formed a rock group, but it is difficult to imagine such a group functioning with Pitre's Donna at its center.
Perhaps the majority of the show's problems can be attributed to director Phyllida Lloyd who, in addition to frequently turgid handling of the show's book scenes, provides no unifying voice. Most of the performers seem to be in different plays, but Anthony Van Laast's minimalist and repetitive choreography and Mark Thompson's unengaging and occasionally confusing production design suggest a similar problem gripped the creative team as well. Only Howard Harrison's lighting seems truly appropriate.
Still, the legions of ABBA fans who attend Mamma Mia! aren't going to care about much of this. They will doubtlessly have a great time, from the first strains of the overture to the final notes of the show's eardrum-pounding musical conclusion. They, like the production team, will care little about the non-musical elements in between, and may well walk away proclaiming Mamma Mia! one of the best shows they've ever seen. They will have gotten their ABBA concert.
Theatregoers expecting a solid, theatrical show will have gotten far less.
Mamma Mia!' Arrives on Broadway
By Michael Kuchwara
AP Drama Critic
Thursday, Oct. 18, 2001; 6:57 p.m. EDT
NEW YORK 每每 Can you forgive a show that brings back platform boots and white spandex?
Apparently theatergoers in London, Toronto, Melbourne and on the road have, turning "Mamma Mia!" into a megahit musical that has audience members dancing in the aisles at the extended curtain calls. Now, it's the turn of fashion-conscious New Yorkers, who probably will be just as accommodating. Taste has nothing to do with it.
"Mamma Mia!" is a triumph of product placement, in this case, the product being nearly two dozens songs by the Swedish pop group ABBA. The musical, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre, is a cannily constructed homage to the thump-thump beat of late 1970s disco personified by those Scandinavian songsmiths Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.
Deep, it's not. There is no subtext. Heck, there's barely any text. The flimsy tale, concocted by Catherine Johnson, is an excuse to insert ABBA's greatest and not-so-greatest hits into a mock Harlequin Romance (with feminist overtones) set on a small Greek island.
Gutsy Donna Sheridan, played by Louise Pitre, was a free spirit years ago. A one-time pop singer and single mother. Now her daughter Sophie is getting married, and she has found the names in her mother's diary of three men who might be her dad. Sophie secretly invites all three to the wedding. Complications ensue.
It takes a full 30 minutes from a deafening overture for "Mamma Mia!" to crank up. The show finally percolates to life when Donna discovers the presence of the men who could be the father of her child. At that moment, the stage goes dark, except for a spotlight on Pitre, who bursts into a frantically funny version of the title tune. It's one of the show's few genuine laughs.
Pitre is the musical's major asset. She is a petite songstress and a game performer with a powerhouse voice. Plus she looks awfully good in a sexy black slip. Pitre is backed up by Broadway veterans Judy Kaye and Karen Mason, who portray friends from her pop-music past. All three were members of a girl group called Donna and the Dynamos.
Each lady gets a chance to shine: Pitre in her anthemlike rendition of "The Winner Takes It All"; the lanky Mason in "Does Your Mother Know" (an effectively overripe number danced with the boyish Mark Price) and Kaye in a countrified version of one of the show's more likable tunes, "Take A Chance on Me."
As Sophie, Tina Maddigan matches Pitre's vocal fireworks, and she even manages to inject a bit of personality into her character 每 a young woman who wants to do things her own way.
ABBA's songs are catchy and hummable, and while numbers such as "Chiquitita" and "Super Trouper" are lollipop bright, they sure don't reveal character or advance the plot (what little there is).
What "Mamma Mia!" does quite cleverly is play on the audience's nostalgia for ABBA. If you aren't a fan or haven't heard of the group, the joke will be lost. The musical numbers are listed in alphabetical order in the theater program, so theatergoers don't know when they will pop up in the show. When they do, the audience can congratulate itself for recognizing the songs and appreciating the skill with which Johnson has slipped them into the show.
There's not much suspense in guessing which guy fathered Sophie, and you don't much care. The men are surprisingly colorless right down the line 每 stock characters played by bland actors. Even Sophie's intended is a cipher.
Designer Mark Thompson has come up with a vibrant blue background for the wide Winter Garden stage. It looks cool and inviting. And near the end of the show, there's a lovely full moon that climbs toward the theater's vast proscenium arch. Yet Thompson's main set, a taverna that swirls and spins around the stage, looks more like an army bunker than an inn on a picturesque Greek isle.
Director Phyllida Lloyd is hard-pressed to keep the show moving, finally allowing the cast to abandon the plot altogether and just sing or dance. Choreographer Anthony Van Laast has the disco dancing down exactly right, yet when he tries for deliberate goofiness 每 dressing his chorus line in scuba outfits, for example 每 it just seems contrived.
But then "Mamma Mia!" revels primarily in its own construction. It's manufactured rather than inspired and so is much of what passes for fun in the show.
Mamma Mia!
Review by Ken Mandelbaum
In its two and a half years of life prior to Broadway, Mamma Mia! has been so widely seen and discussed that you probably already know a good deal about it. There can＊t be anyone reading this unaware that the show features 22 pre-existing song hits of the Swedish pop quartet ABBA. And you must know that the show has been an enormous hit everywhere, from London to Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Australia, the latter a stronghold of ABBA admiration, with ＆90s films The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel＊s Wedding also featuring the group＊s songs.
Surely you＊ve heard that Mamma Mia! is not a revue tribute but a book show, with Catherine Johnson enlisted to invent a narrative to link the songs. And it＊s been much noted that a major factor in the audience＊s enjoyment of the piece is discovering where the next familiar ditty is going to turn up, and how it will be worked into the action. (The songs are listed alphabetically in the program so as not to give that away; they＊re in show order on the London cast recording.)
Borrowing liberally from the plot of the film Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell and its musicalization, the 1979 Broadway flop Carmelina, Mamma Mia! is a fairy-tale romance set in and around a Greek island taverna owned by Donna (Louise Pitre), free spirit, single mother, and former lead singer of a disco-era girl group. It＊s the eve of her daughter Sophie＊s wedding, and, unbeknownst to her mother, Sophie (Tina Maddigan) has invited to the ceremony three of Donna＊s former flames, in hopes of discovering which of them is the father who will give her away. Also present for the wedding are her mother＊s girl-power band cohorts, thrice-married Tanya (Karen Mason) and Rosie (Judy Kaye), single editor of a women＊s press.
As a work of musical theatre, Mamma Mia! is synthetic and negligible. It＊s not a show likely to be of particular interest to (or the occasion of frequent revisits by) musical theatre aficionados, but then it really isn＊t geared to hard-core devotees, some of whom might actually prefer to attend Chess or Kristina fran Duvemala, the other musicals with scores by ABBA＊s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.
But as dopey musicals go, Mamma Mia! is not entirely without smarts. By arriving in New York at this time, it has unwittingly become another title in the town＊s recent spate of self-aware, ironic shows. Although it＊s a lowbrow entry in that category, the show＊s knowingness is its saving grace: It acknowledges, sometimes to amusing effect, the fundamental hopelessness of asking classic pop hits to advance a story line and match characters for whom they weren＊t written.
No, the songs, even with occasional lyric alterations, don＊t really fit what＊s happening, and what＊s happening sometimes stops dead until a number is over. But Mamma Mia! admits that those songs are its only reason for being, so doesn＊t try too hard to fit them in. As a result, a problem that weighed more heavily on shows like Saturday Night Fever and Footloose--the futility of deploying pre-existing pop as character material--is less troublesome here.
Produced, written, and directed by women and featuring four female leads, Mamma Mia! can be viewed as a feminist piece, with occasional glances at the differing outlooks of ＆70s mother and ＆90s offspring. But there＊s little reason to demand social significance of this loud, silly evening, even if one is entitled to ask why Johnson＊s book doesn＊t contain more laughs.
The songs are hard to resist; indeed, Mamma Mia! may be treasured by those, unlike myself, who actually had a connection to these songs when they appeared in the ＆70s. The numbers often have a recorded, ※mixed§ feel; a possible explanation of why there＊s no Broadway cast recording in the works is that the show＊s arrangements, background vocals, and sound design sometimes make it difficult for individual voices to emerge as distinctly as they would in other musicals.
The principal men--David W. Keeley (divorced architect Sam), Ken Marks (single travel writer Bill), Dean Nolen (banker Harry), and Joe Machota (fiance Sky)--fit the bill but don＊t register strongly. It＊s perhaps only natural that director Phyllida Lloyd＊s production belongs to its ladies.
Pitre＊s Donna comes to us by way of Toronto and four U.S. cities. She has just the right look for a ＆70s hippie grown older, and she＊s a gritty, distinctive singer, particularly impressive turning around ※The Winner Takes It All§; the song is greeted with a chuckle when it arrives, but Pitre manages to make it work as a dramatic spot. (I would still like to see what Dee Hoty, Donna on the current national tour, might be able to do with the part.)
Also from the original Toronto/U.S. company, Maddigan is nicely unaffected and sings with ease. As the backup ladies of ※Donna and the Dynamos,§ Kaye and Mason are overqualified but in good form, seizing all their comic and vocal opportunities.
Dominated by a pair of revolving set pieces, Mark Thompson＊s unit design is simple, spare, and functional. Anthony Van Laast＊s musical staging features props from hair dryers to scuba gear and is most notable for the post-curtain call megamix, with everyone on stage and celebrating. Pioneered by Van Laast in the ＆90s Joseph... revival, the extended megamix may reach its apex here, fulfilling its goal of sending the crowd out happy. (It ends with an unlisted, 23rd song, ※Waterloo,§ the first ABBA hit.)
I had expected Mamma Mia! to be mindless fun, a guilty-pleasure kitschfest, and no doubt it will be just that for many. I never fully surrendered to it: The text is flimsy, and the evening is ultimately an excuse to present the ABBA catalogue rather than a satisfying musical. But Mamma Mia! can be commended for not taking itself too seriously, and there are always those songs. Indeed, while I found Mamma Mia! resistible in the theatre, I couldn＊t get its music out of my head in the following days. I suppose there＊s little use in pretending that it＊s not a crowd-pleaser that works for the audience at which it＊s aimed. But future showmakers looking to repeat its formula would be well advised to proceed at their own risk.
ABBA DABBA DO!
By CLIVE BARNES
October 19, 2001
MAMMA MIA!
3 1/2 Stars
At the Winter Garden Theatre, 1634 Broadway. Call (212) 239-6200.
'MAMMA Mia!" finally opened at the Winter Garden Theatre last night, after starting in London two years ago and traveling the English-speaking world ever since.
The ABBA musical was flamboyantly worth the wait. "Mamma Mia!" flies as tuneful as a lark and as smart as a cuckoo.
It offers one of those nights when you sit back and let a nutty kind of joy just sweep over you.
What's so different about this new rock-solid hit? Well, for one thing, it hasn't any new songs.
The score - neatly arranged by Martin Koch - is a nostalgic parade of 22 songs from the alphabetically challenged Swedish pop group of the '70s.
The true hero is British playwright Catherine Johnson, who took all these songs and cobbled a cohesive book around them. Genius.
The story Johnson came up with is rather similar to the 1968 Sophia Loren movie "Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell," which also clearly inspired the later Alan Jay Lerner/Burton Lane Broadway musical, "Carmelina."
In all three, a lady finds herself a single mother with an 18-year-old daughter and the memory of not one, but three possible fathers.
Here the potential fathers are quite unaware of their possible paternity.
The heroine, Donna, still lives on a tiny Greek island, where they all first met and where she nowadays owns and runs the local taverna.
The plot gets going as Donna's daughter Sophie, about to get married, reads her mother's diary of the time, and guesses the identity of mom's three old flames.
Wanting her father at her wedding, and confident that she would recognize him at once, Sophie invites all three, unbeknownst to her mother.
Naturally, when they get there - together with two female buddies of Donna who in the old days formed a singing group with her - things are rather more complicated.
Johnson tells her story so skillfully you really feel for these people. And the ABBA songs are so perfectly matched you can only smile happily.
Phyllida Lloyd's staging gets the very last ounce of fun and sentiment out of the show - it's dazzlingly fast and breathtakingly simple - while Anthony Van Laast's choreography supports it at every turn.
As indeed do Mark Thompson's effectively Spartan setting and Howard Harrison's lighting, which splashes the scene with Aegean sunlight.
Canadian Louise Pitre, while offering a well-sung, resourceful and spunky Donna, hasn't got the innate tenderness of the London version's Siobhan McCarthy, so moments like the song "Slipping Through My Fingers," wonderfully used here for a mother/daughter duet, go for less than they should.
Of the three suitors, David W. Keeley (another Canadian) is resolutely fine as the romantic Sam, but the other two are narrowly OK.
Tina Maddigan, yet a third Canadian who plays Donna's daughter, and Joe Machota as her groom look good but don't always light up the Greek sky.
The great Judy Kaye and a languidly funny Karen Mason as those retro Dancing Queens from Donna's old pop-rock trio hold the show together like Krazy Glue.
And when you get to the coda finale - keep your seats, it ain't over till it's over - you'll be so happy you'll think you've just become a grandparent.
NYPOST.COM Theater Reviews ABBA DABBA DO! By CLIVE BARNES
An AP Arts Review
MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic
Thursday, October 18, 2001
Breaking News Sections
(10-18) 15:52 PDT (AP) -- ^The curse of platform boots and white spandex: `Mamma Mia!' arrives on Broadway=
NEW YORK (AP) -- Can you forgive a show that brings back platform boots and white spandex?
Apparently theatergoers in London, Toronto, Melbourne and on the road have, turning "Mamma Mia!" into a megahit musical that has audience members dancing in the aisles at the extended curtain calls. Now, it's the turn of fashion-conscious New Yorkers, who probably will be just as accommodating. Taste has nothing to do with it.
"Mamma Mia!" is a triumph of product placement, in this case, the product being nearly two dozens songs by the Swedish pop group ABBA. The musical, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre, is a cannily constructed homage to the thump-thump beat of late 1970s disco personified by those Scandinavian songsmiths Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.
Deep, it's not. There is no subtext. Heck, there's barely any text. The flimsy tale, concocted by Catherine Johnson, is an excuse to insert ABBA's greatest and not-so-greatest hits into a mock Harlequin Romance (with feminist overtones) set on a small Greek island.
Gutsy Donna Sheridan, played by Louise Pitre, was a free spirit years ago. A one-time pop singer and single mother. Now her daughter Sophie is getting married, and she has found the names in her mother's diary of three men who might be her dad. Sophie secretly invites all three to the wedding. Complications ensue.
It takes a full 30 minutes from a deafening overture for "Mamma Mia!" to crank up. The show finally percolates to life when Donna discovers the presence of the men who could be the father of her child. At that moment, the stage goes dark, except for a spotlight on Pitre, who bursts into a frantically funny version of the title tune. It's one of the show's few genuine laughs.
Pitre is the musical's major asset. She is a petite songstress and a game performer with a powerhouse voice. Plus she looks awfully good in a sexy black slip. Pitre is backed up by Broadway veterans Judy Kaye and Karen Mason, who portray friends from her pop-music past. All three were members of a girl group called Donna and the Dynamos.
Each lady gets a chance to shine: Pitre in her anthemlike rendition of "The Winner Takes It All"; the lanky Mason in "Does Your Mother Know" (an effectively overripe number danced with the boyish Mark Price) and Kaye in a countrified version of one of the show's more likable tunes, "Take A Chance on Me."
As Sophie, Tina Maddigan matches Pitre's vocal fireworks, and she even manages to inject a bit of personality into her character -- a young woman who wants to do things her own way.
ABBA's songs are catchy and hummable, and while numbers such as "Chiquitita" and "Super Trouper" are lollipop bright, they sure don't reveal character or advance the plot (what little there is).
What "Mamma Mia!" does quite cleverly is play on the audience's nostalgia for ABBA. If you aren't a fan or haven't heard of the group, the joke will be lost. The musical numbers are listed in alphabetical order in the theater program, so theatergoers don't know when they will pop up in the show. When they do, the audience can congratulate itself for recognizing the songs and appreciating the skill with which Johnson has slipped them into the show.
There's not much suspense in guessing which guy fathered Sophie, and you don't much care. The men are surprisingly colorless right down the line -- stock characters played by bland actors. Even Sophie's intended is a cipher.
Designer Mark Thompson has come up with a vibrant blue background for the wide Winter Garden stage. It looks cool and inviting. And near the end of the show, there's a lovely full moon that climbs toward the theater's vast proscenium arch. Yet Thompson's main set, a taverna that swirls and spins around the stage, looks more like an army bunker than an inn on a picturesque Greek isle.
Director Phyllida Lloyd is hard-pressed to keep the show moving, finally allowing the cast to abandon the plot altogether and just sing or dance. Choreographer Anthony Van Laast has the disco dancing down exactly right, yet when he tries for deliberate goofiness -- dressing his chorus line in scuba outfits, for example -- it just seems contrived.
But then "Mamma Mia!" revels primarily in its own construction. It's manufactured rather than inspired and so is much of what passes for fun in the show
Mamma Mia!
Mama Mia! Mama Mia!, The Worst Show Ever
by John Heilpern
Oh, my. How shall I put this? In younger days, ABBA somehow passed me by, and I was glad. The deadening white-bread disco beat of those wild and crazy spandex Swedes was surely a bad joke in the 70＊s. But I must hand it to the creators of Mama Mia!: Nobody has ever thought of setting a modern musical in a Greek taverna to the collected golden oldies of ABBA before.
Now, why a show that＊s set in Greece has an Italian title isn＊t for the likes of us to ask. As Mama Mia!＊s opening song puts it so sweetly:
If you see the wonder
Of a fairy tale
You can take the future
Even if you fail
Comfort food for thought there! It＊s O.K. to fail. Failing is good. Mama Mia! actually proves it. This feel-good hit musical for emotionally troubled middle-aged theatergoers in urgent need of an ABBA fix or a cupcake comes to us via England, a country that has made failure an art form for a thousand years. It＊s hard on all the folks behind the ABBA musical. But the reason I left England for the warm, democratic embrace of America 20 blissfully neurotic years ago was musicals like Mama Mia!
It＊s true that you do not, as a general rule, leave a country because of its musicals. But I did. There were other reasons〞the usual naked ambition, greed, borderline sex.
You are the Dancing Queen
Young and sweet only 17
Dancing Queen
Feel the beat from the tambourine
Oh yeah
But I digress. Mama Mia! proudly represents something deeply ingrained in the British psyche〞the cult of the amateur. Excellence is not necessarily seen as a virtue. You gamely "have a bash" instead. If, for example, you wonder why nobody seems to be able to dance in Mama Mia!, you just don＊t get it and should proceed to jail immediately. They＊re not supposed to be able to dance. Because the amateur-night psychology creates the impression that you could be up there doing it, too. You could be feeling the beat from the tambourine.
On the other hand, this is a musical that has very little dancing in it. British musicals almost never dance. It＊s because the middle classes of England have confused it over the years with show-jumping. But that＊s beside the point here. Mama Mia! doesn＊t have any scintillating dance sequences because it＊s a dance musical. It＊s a deliberate decision.
Why, then, would anyone in their right mind choose the collected works of ABBA for a new musical? Because all the songs sound the same. After half an hour, you imagine that you know them. After an hour, they＊re one of the family〞the one who never leaves. Why, at a poignant moment when the heroine gets upset, do we hear the endearingly evocative Spanish music of ABBA＊s "Chiquitita"? Because it doesn＊t matter. Plus the lyrics to "Chiquitita," like all the other lyrics, can be made to fit more or less any situation in a Greek taverna.
Now I see you＊ve
Broken a feather
I hope
We can patch it up
Together
The Greek taverna doesn＊t look Greek, incidentally. It＊s deliberate. The production designer, Mark Thompson, who＊s known for his elegant work on The Madness of King George and Arcadia, has cannily created a cheap grunge eyesore of a taverna to fool sophisticates anticipating the dazzling white of the iridescent Aegean.
On the other hand, there aren＊t many artists who＊ve been inspired by Gina Lollobrigida in her underrated masterpiece, 1968＊s Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (also starring Telly Savalas, Phil Silvers, Peter Lawford and Shelley Winters). Buona Sera is the story of three Air Force guys who could be the father of glamour girl Gina＊s child, now 20 years old. Mama Mia! is the story of three guys who could be the father of glamour girl Donna＊s child, Sophie, who＊s about to be married in white to scuba-diving Sky in the Greek taverna.
Sophie, a somewhat conventional, prying nag of a daughter, is determined to find out who her father is. She wants things done properly. Having read Mum＊s diary from the 70＊s, she invites her three ex-lovers to the wedding. My bets were on Bill, described as "a heartland hottie." But I was wrong. It might have been the one who looks like a fridge just dropped on his head, but I＊m not saying any more on that score.
Mum, the disco free spirit and former lead singer of an ABBA-like rock group called the Dynamos, runs the taverna. She isn＊t exactly bitter. But was a life of single-parenthood and kebabs the way it was meant to be? I don＊t think so.
The winner takes it all
The winner takes it all
The game is on again
A lover or a friend
A big thing or a small
"I＊m old enough to be your mother."
"You can call me Oedipus."
And by now I expect you must be doubled up with laughter, though pub humor isn＊t always for everyone. The Gina Lollobrigida每inspired book by Catherine Johnson has nevertheless given us one of the all-time great lines of the romantic musical:
"You don＊t need bagpipes to do that."
That＊s the line. Say no more! And that＊s Mama Mia!, which has been directed by Phyllida Loyd very badly. It＊s deliberate, of course. This is her musical debut, however, and it takes experience and great originality to be awesomely bad in the right way. The dreary dump of mediocre talent shouldn＊t be confused with witty spoof and camp. In good times and bad, people deserve the very best. If, as more than a few of us believe, Mel Brooks＊ The Producers is the best show you could wish to see, where does that leave dear old ABBA and this dated, careless, cobbled-together crap? No offense intended. The problem with Mama Mia! is that it＊s the worst show ever and proud of it.
Village Voice
By Michael Musto
A new '70s musical, Mamma Mia!, has tourists dancing in the aisles, though discerning critics are dancing down the aisles in search of an exit. The show creates a plot around a bunch of old ABBA hits, which is a little like making burgers out of Jell-O, though it's mainly an excuse for giddy straight camp and tawdry soap opera to be Bj扯rn again. In this lowbrow affair〞which makes Aida look like Sunday in the Park With George〞the dialogue rarely gets more sophisticated than a Here's Lucy, the acting seems geared to the sightless (except for the three lead ladies, who are smart enough to poke fun at the material), and there's so much cheese on display that the Playbill should come with crackers.
But there is a distinct popular appeal in the dopey, flashy treatment of the Scandinavian disco legend by way of a plot borrowed from Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell. And there's gay context galore, both intended ("I hope to get my tongue around a little Greek," leers a male character) and unintended ("Does your mother know that you're out?" a woman sings to her young suitor). By the time the groom appears in the wedding gown, you might be willing to give in to the awfulness, but even if you don't, this thing is such a franchise that Bloomingdale's already has a Mamma Mia! shop, filled with peasant blouses that show off your nipples. ABBA-dabba-do wear a bra.
'Mamma' has its moments
NY TIMES
By Elysa Gardner
NEW YORK -- The marriage of musical theater and rock 'n' roll always has been a shaky one. Sadly, each genre can bring out the worst in the other, resulting in shows that often drip with melodrama and bombast.
At first blush, Mamma Mia! ( * * out of four), which opened Thursday at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre, promises to be different. For starters, it is based on the songs of the Swedish pop group ABBA, whose '70s hits offered more melodic freshness than most of the stuff that Andrew Lloyd Webber or Pete Townshend wrote in that period. And unlike the ''rock operas'' penned by those songwriters, Mamma Mia! is designed as a whimsical musical comedy.
Unfortunately, that sense of whimsy is not enough to carry the musical's thin, clich谷-ridden plot for more than two hours.
Granted, author Catherine Johnson faced a daunting task in weaving 22 tunes written by former ABBA members Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson for various albums into a cohesive story, without altering their lyrics substantially. Johnson's basic premise is clever: Donna, a single mom who runs a taverna on a Greek island, is preparing for the wedding of her daughter, Sophie, who has secretly invited three of her mother's former beaus -- each of whom may be Sophie's dad. Thus the foundation is laid for a light-hearted study of old and new love, dashed hopes and revived dreams, romance and betrayal -- all the stuff that great pop singles are made of.
And yet Mamma Mia!'s best moments are generally distinguished not by emotional directness or gentle humor, but by high camp. When Donna, played by Louise Pitre as a feisty aging hippie, catches sight of the ex-boyfriends, she bursts abruptly into a frantic and very funny version of the show's title song. Later, she's joined by her best friends -- played by an earthy Judy Kaye and a sultry Karen Mason -- for a delirious Super Trouper. All wear gloriously tacky white-spandex suits, modeled after those that ABBA's members once sported.
Oddly, the scenes that feature some of ABBA's most memorable music don't fare as well. The classics S.O.S. and The Winner Takes It All are awkwardly inserted into sappy confrontations between Donna and an old flame, Sam, whom David W. Keeley manages to imbue with an easy strength. As Sophie, Tina Maddigan is also endearing, despite being saddled with such lines as, ''I don't care if you've slept with hundreds of men -- you're my mother and I love you.''
If some of the comedy is lame, a few earnest touches do work. Pitre's Slipping Through My Fingers is a poignant account of a mother struggling to let go. And Maddigan delivers I Have a Dream with a lovely, understated warmth.
Still, many of the dramatic and comic shenanigans feel forced. And, frankly, the best musical performances here can't compete with ABBA's golden oldies. Knowing me, knowing you, I'd take a chance on another musical.
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