Dig out your flares and Go-Go boots and join us at MAMMA MIA! Enjoy the feel-good factor of the world’s sunniest and most exhilarating smash-hit musical at the New Theatre, Cardiff.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but the sing-along finale is the highlight of this performance.
If it’s a tribute show with plenty of dancing in the aisles that you’re after, then you will be disappointed. But, if two hours of timeless ABBA hits being shoehorned into the thread of a supremely cheesy, pick-me-up plotline is more your bag, then sit back and enjoy.
Before curtain-up, a voiceover warns the predominantly female audience that ‘those of a nervous disposition’ should be prepared for a performance featuring ‘platform boots and white lycra’ – a little misleading, as neither featured as readily as we imagined they would!
And that’s because – as in both films released since the play first premiered on London’s West End in 1999 – this global, record-breaking show plays out against a pretty, traditional aqua blue and white, sleepy Greek isle backdrop, where flip flops and casual dungarees or beach-ready wetsuits and scuba suits are more the norm.
With music and lyrics true to ABBA talent Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus, it’s a challenge to stay seated for the majority of this story – the tale of young Brit abroad Sophie, planning her wedding, with her fiercely independent, role model, ex-pat mum Donna, who has a portfolio of exes, who could be Sophie’s dad.
The female-led action centres around wedding prep, guests’ arrival and the mother (or father) of paternity showdowns.
In both smash hit silver screen spin offs – Mamma Mia! The Movie (2008) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again ten years later – inspired casting saw the glorious Meryl Streep starring as Donna, accompanied by the equally iconic Cher playing her mother in the 2018 follow-up!
Stand-out performances on this tour produced by Judy Craymer (who produced both film adaptations too), come from Donna’s two best friends and former ABBA tribute bandmates Tanya and Rosie – an Ab Fab double act, who provide much of the warm comedy depicted by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski in the all-star cast films.
On stage, Sarah Earnshaw plays man eater Tanya and Nicky Swift is comical Rose (when she isn’t alternating with Sara Poyzer to be Donna.)
Twenty four years on, and Mamma Mia! has now been seen by over 65 million people in 50 productions in 16 different languages.
The stage cast continually bursts into song and seamless, crisply choreographed routines, which apparently helped revitalize Broadway post 9/11. Meryl Streep is on record as being one of those in the audience to have benefitted from the release back then.
This UK cast celebrated a whopping 3,500 performances of the tour on February 1st, shortly before landing in Cardiff.
For me, song highlights were Slipping Through My Fingers and The Winner Takes It All, but then I have always been, and always will be, a sucker for a wistful, sad lyric over any feelgood karaoke classic.
Donna sings the first to Sophie on the eve of her wedding, to express watching her little girl grow into independence and serenades Sam with the second, to let him know how painful it was when he left her and Greece to return to his UK fiancé 20 years before.
He returns the favour with Knowing Me, Knowing You, becoming slightly contrived to depict the subsequent loneliness and breakdown of his ill-fated marriage, before the audience is jerked back into the sunny score of I Do, I Do, I Do and an interactive Mamma Mia!, Dancing Queen and Waterloo finale – an uplifting antidote to a dark and drizzly February night.
Showing at New Theatre, Cardiff until March 4, 2023 – www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk