Mamma Mia! You’re Having Too Much Fun!
Say you’re Donna Sheridan, a single woman, living on the Greek aisle of Kalokaini, owner of an inn and mother of one 20-yaer-old daughter. You’ve got three different men, all believing they are the girl’s father, and supporting her in absentia. Daughter wants to get married, and she wants a father to ‘give her away’. In her search for her true Dad, she discovers Mom’s diary from more than 20 years ago, and voila! The plot goes deliriously on from there.
With a sound track provided by the members of ABBA, the Swedish pop band of long-standing fame, and a sparkling cast of real ‘characters’, this is entertainment to die for. Mamma Mia! has the music to make you cheer and the comedy to make you roar. Plot and music are combined in a delightful progression, as daughter Sophie looks for her true father (“I Have a Dream”). She tracks down all three of the possible candidates and invites them to her wedding, to her mother’s horror. Mom is trying to keep the men in the dark, but after meeting Sophie, all three join in the conspiracy. Along the way Donna and her friends from way back (Rosie and Tanya, part of the one-time Donna and the Dynamos band) get together to provide some of the highlights of the show (“Dancing Queen”, “Money, Money, Money” among other familiar favorites.)
Mamma Mia! actually originates from ABBA’s 1975 hit of the same name, and many of the other numbers from that release comprise the heat and the heart of both the movie and the stage production. As a note, ABBA is an acronym for the first names of the four band members: Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid. The group was involved in the entire production of Mamma Mia! from start to finish, not only composing the score but even appearing in cameo roles in the movie.
The musical (adapted from the 1968 movie “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell”) was a roaring success in London in 1999, with ABBA’s Benny Andersson contributing additional music and lyrics. The play has toured world wide to delighted theatregoers in the U.S. and Canada, as well as all over Europe and even Australia. It will be in Mexico soon, and shows no sign of slowing down. It has been cited as “the most successful Hollywood musical of all time”, and when the movie was released, it out-grossed every other film in history in the U.K.
In the movie, Meryl Streep, with Amanda Seyfried as her daughter Sophie, plays Donna Sheridan, the unconventional Mom, with great ?lan. The two make a pretty good team, even if they are at odds on the subject of fatherhood. Donna has been getting support for Sophie from Sam, (and Bill, and Harry), and would just as soon leave it that way. Sophie disagrees, and so do the three men when Sophie unveils Donna’s duplicity. Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth, as Sam, Bill and Harry all fall into a good-natured plot, and somehow nobody’s feelings get hurt.
The conspiracy and all its complications involve a lot of very funny moments and some very entertaining numbers by different members of the cast, as they get to know one another, form unexpected relationships and re-establish old ones. Life in general is celebrated with dancing, singing and impractical jokes. The majority of the filming was done on the Greek island of Skopelos, with Kastani beach getting most of the action. Pretty hard not to have fun!
ABBA’s music really holds it all together and swings it along, with such crowd-pleasers as “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”, “Thank You For the Music” and “The Winner Takes It All”. Benny Andersson has a cameo role as the fisherman playing piano while the girls show us what “Dancing Queen” is all about. The title song, “Mamma Mia!” as well as “Super Trouper”, “When All Is Said and Done” and others composed just for the musical all serve to keep the action moving with a bounce.
Mamma Mia! is an experience to enjoy, whether you catch the stage production or the movie. It is simply great entertainment, with no regrets to be found anywhere!
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