Mamma Mia! What a Show!

Cafe Society
1

I saw the national touring company perform the Broadway smash Mamma Mia last night.

What a great show. Hilarious and energetic. Packed house gave a standing ovation and stayed standing while the cast rocked out with the closing two numbers, a reprise of Dancing Queen and then Waterloo.

When I first got my season tickets I was a bit suspicious about a show built around ABBA music. I mean, heck, while ABBA could crank out a good melody and some nice harmony I was skeptical about how the show would flow. After all, the music wasn’t written to tell a story… the story was written to create a framework for the music.

I first became hopeful when someone in the SDMB got me interested in Chess - the Musical. But alas, the thread in question was lost in the Winter Of Our Missed Content[sup]TM[/sup]. I bought the Chess CD and loved it. I thought, “hmmm, maybe this Mamma Mia show will be interesting after all.” (By the way, for those who don’t know, the “BB” in ABBA is Bjorn and Benny who also wrote Chess.)

Bottom line is that if you have a chance to go see Mamma Mia, I recommend that you go.

2

I saw it with Mrs. Astronomer a couple of weeks ago in San Francisco. The lead male was not a great singer (matter of fact, none of them really was), but the show was fun, and I enjoyed it.

It’s amazing how you can actually build a plot around 20 or so ABBA songs. We talked about that quite a bit afterwards. A couple of songs were especially cleverly woven in.
“Take a Chance on Me” was particularly funny.

I would recommend it, except the price was outrageous. I won’t be seeing much live theater like that again for a while.

3

A whole bunch of us went to see it in Providence. We all dressed up. No one else did. It was a full theater of boring people, and row 14, which was full of feather boas, glitter, colored wigs, and fun. The cast loved us:)