Mamma Mia!


Mamma Mia! is a play that is more a tribute to the music of ABBA than anything else.

The story, which has its funny moments, is based on a daughter, Sophie (Tina Maddigan), trying to find her true father to give her away at her wedding. Turns out that the mother, Donna (Louise Pitre) had sex with three people in a short time during the summer of love, and the father could be any one of the three. So Donna surreptitiously invites all three of them to the wedding. They all show up and to the chagrin of Louise, all three of them want to give Donna away.

About twenty popular ABBA songs are featured in the play each one is fairly appropriate for the moment in the story. Usually a line in the dialogue is replaced by the opening line of the song, which works quite well most of the time.

Mamma Mia! is a funny musical/comedy that I highly recommend (mostly for the danceable live music). The music is terrific and really illustrates what talented composers ABBA were. At the end, all the actors come back together in 70s garb and perform some of the classic tunes again, as well as Waterloo, which is omitted from the play itself.


Play ram-blings || Ram Samudrala || me@ram.org || June 29, 2003