If you love Mamma Mia!, you’re gonna love Mamma Mia! With the touring production of the hit ABBA musical making a six-month stop on Broadway, the flawed, fun-loving show returns to the venue – the Winter Garden Theatre – where it held sway back when the century was new.
The ninth-longest running Broadway show of all time, Mamma Mia! ran for 14 years at the Winter Garden following its opening shortly after the Towers fell. This touring production’s stop at the Garden has all the makings of a homecoming, and it’s a strenuously joyous one.
Well, joyous if you’re a Mamma Mia! fan, more strenuous if you’re not, and by now it seems likely that everyone knows to which group they belong. Judging by the audience responses at the reviewed performance, Mamma Mia! is calling its fans home with the siren songs of Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. (The duo are having a big Broadway season: Their infrequently revived Chess is coming to the Imperial this fall, with Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele and Nicholas Christopher leading the cast).
The flaws – and they are not inconsiderable – remain. Catherine Johnson’s book is as hokey and stitched-together as ever – in fact, two or three outdated jokes fall absolutely flat, particularly one about getting one’s tongue around a little Greek (seriously, just cut it) – and Phyllida Lloyd’s direction has, after all these years, done nothing but mark time. Anthony Van Laast’s choreography is more energetic than inventive.
Not that any of this matters to the built-in audience, and why should it? The costumes are bright and gaudy and kitsch, the lighting (design by Howard Harrison) takes us from sun-washed Greek Island high noon to blue and orange sundown and deep purple balmy nights. Mark Thompson’s production design is nothing if not efficient – the set consists of little more than a facade of a white-washed Greek building that pivots out to show its interior, a modest taverna where all the action takes place. It’s all as it should be, nothing more, nothing less.
The cast – many making their Broadway debuts – is enthusiastic and very game for whatever the often absurd book throws at them. Handed some of the catchiest songs in pop music history (you don’t even have to like them to get them stuck in your head), the actors on stage make the most of the opportunity, even if some of the voices – particularly among the younger performers – aren’t always forceful enough to find their way through the very loud and overwhelming orchestrations. Those songs, everyone knows, include the title song, “Dancing Queen,” “The Winner Takes It All,” “Money, Money, Money,” and “Take a Chance on Me.” Stick around to the curtain call for “Waterloo.”
The story remains methodical and silly. Set in what must be the late 1990s on a Greek island, Mamma Mia! borrows and waters down some of Shakespeare’s comedy tropes – a wedding, mysterious identities, long-buried secrets and unexpressed longings – to tell the story of young Sophie (Amy Weaver) and her doting, protective mom Donna (Christine Sherrill). Sophie is about to wed Sky (Grant Reynolds), and her one wish is to discover which of three men is her biological father. So she invites, without her mom’s knowledge, all three potential candidates (Rob Marnell, Jim Newman and Victor Wallace) to the wedding, none of the possible dads knowing why they’re on the guest list.
Joining in the merriment and chaos are Donna’s old pals Rosie (Carly Sakolove) and Tanya (scene-stealer Jalynn Steele). Once a popular singing trio, the reunited group is, we’re all but promised from the get-go, destined to don their old very ABBA-ish costumes before the night is done. And Mamma Mia! keeps its promises.
Title: Mamma Mia!Venue: Broadway’s Winter Garden TheatreDirection: Phyllida LloydChoreography: Anthony Van LaastBook: Catherine JohnsonMusic & Lyrics: Benny Andersson & Björn UlvaeusCast: Christine Sherrill, Amy Weaver, Carly Sakolove, Jalynn Steele, Rob Marnell, Jim Newman, Victor Wallace and Grant Reynolds.Running time: 2 hr 30 min (including intermission)
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