Liana Hunt is charming as Sophie Sheridan, who sets the action off by inviting three of her mother Donna’s ex-beaus to her small, thin Greek wedding, uncertain which of them is her father.Kevin Thomas Garcia
Mamma Mia!
- Music and lyrics by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus
- Book by Catherine Johnson
- Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
- At the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto
Mamma Mia!, the 1999 musical comedy based around a string of pre-existing ABBA hits, is easily the most influential stage show of the last 15 years. Après Mia, le déluge: We Will Rock You, Dirty Dancing, Jersey Boys, Rock of Ages, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, to name only the so-called jukebox musicals that have made it, or will soon make it, to Toronto.
And, for better or for worse, the Mamma Mia! revolution is still on the ascendant. Last week, Variety speculated that, for the first time, all four Broadway shows nominated for best musical at the Tony Awards this year might be based around pre-existing scores.
So, it is with some embarrassment that I admit I had never seen this ur-text onstage until this week, when the North American tour checked back into Toronto. The fans will flock, the naysayers will stay away, but here are a few things that struck this Mamma Mia! virgin.
Though I missed the sight of a pained Pierce Brosnan attempting to sing, director Phyllida Lloyd's stage show is obviously infinitely better put together than the movie. The main reason: Anthony Van Laast's energetic, absurd choreography is easily half the fun of Mamma Mia!, but you would never know that onscreen, because Lloyd had no idea how to shoot it.
Since Mamma Mia! only intermittently makes rational sense - ABBA's songs are often only tangentially related to the plot - Van Laast's sudden conjuring of a casino scene for Money, Money, Money or a line of buff young men dancing in flippers and scuba gear for Lay All Your Love on Me signal that you should just shut your mind off and go along with the fantasy.
Liana Hunt is charming as Sophie Sheridan, who sets the action off by inviting three of her mother Donna's ex-beaus to her small, thin Greek wedding, uncertain which of them is her father.
As her feisty single mom, Michelle Dawson channels Rosie the Riveter, but while she wields power drills with determination, her voice isn't as strong. Or perhaps it was poorly miked - it kept getting drowned out by the orchestra, anyway, until she finally let it all out in The Winner Takes It All.
When the characters just sing and the silliness of the show is embraced, Mamma Mia! is delirious fun. Particularly joyous are the numbers featuring Donna's best buds and former backup singers, Tanya (Rachel Tyler) and Rosie (Kittra Wynn Coomer). The men fare all right as well in a couple of big, cartoony performances: Matthew Ashford has a good time as the gung-ho goofball who is Potential Dad 2, while Canadian-born Vincent Corazza may be overly affected in his British accent as Potential Dad 1, but eventually he wins us over.
The show's Waterloo? There's no denying that whenever the characters try to express real emotions through the lyrics of ABBA, the energy dies - at least in this production. The words never quite fit with the situation or match up with the characters who sing them; they've been shoehorned in. This is most excruciatingly obvious when Potential Dad 3, Sam (a charmless John Sanders) offers prewedding advice to his possible daughter with a song about breaking up, Knowing Me, Knowing You.
What surprised me was how many creepy sexual moments there are in the show. The first comes when Sophie's dads show up to her bachelorette party and her friends give them lap dances to Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). The men are old enough to be their fathers - and given the apparent willy-nilly approach to using contraception while on holiday in Greece, many of them might be.
The second: When young taverna employee Pepper (the insanely exuberant Adam Michael Kaokept) keeps hitting on Tanya, she pushes him off by noting that she is old enough to be his mother. To which he replies: "Well, then you can call me Oedipus." Cue Does Your Mother Know.
Regardless, Mamma Mia! really owns its demographic. How many shows are unabashedly geared toward baby-boomer women and have three sexy, genuinely funny characters of that age in their cast? Since it premiered, there have been plenty of shows that have tried to be Mamma Mia! for guys - Jersey Boys, Rock of Ages - but very few have tried to match up to this by making another Mamma Mia! for women.
Mamma Mia! runs in Toronto to June 27.