mamma mia!
MAMMA MIA! Lyric Theatre, Star City October 23-February 7, 2010; Her Majesty’s, Melbourne, February 13-May 30; Burswood Theatre, Perth, June 5-August 1; Lyric QPAC Brisbane, August 10-September 19; photos by James Morgan
TEN YEARS is a long time in anyone’s reckoning. (Can anyone tell me what’s happened to this year, for instance?) So it’s scary to return after that length of time to a much loved something or someone. Will it be as you remember – a joyous entertainment with no pretension and excellent value for money? Will your dear friend still be as funny, sexy, kind, feisty, smart, opinionated and lovable as you remember? Or will she have turned into a comfortable, boring old bag?
If the something is Mamma Mia! and the someone is Anne Wood aka Donna the answers are – nuh, she’s still the Super Trouper and the show is still the chicks’ show to end all chicks’ shows; a fabulous night out for families of all shapes and sizes and anyone who’s temporarily run out of prescribed mood enhancers.
It’s hard to believe that a decade has passed since audiences were humming, singing and clapping along to Abba in the show devised by Judy Craymer, Catherine Johnson and Phyllida Lloyd. This trio of English women dreamed up Mamma Mia! and are now multi-millionaires on the back of it. Well woop-di-doo for them. Who could resent such an inspired and unlikely dream?
In case you’ve been living on South Georgia for the past decade, or are a misanthrope of eye-watering acidity and avoided the show and the movie, you’ll know the “story”. But to recap: Donna (Wood) is the single mother of Sophie (musical theatre babe-in-waiting Susie Mathers), who is 20 and wants to get married with all the trimmings; a reaction to Donna, perhaps, who was a wild rock chick and always had a pretty loose grip on social conventions. Donna owns and runs a dilapidated taverna on a small Greek island; she’s done it tough and lonely but values her independence and her best mates from Donna and the Dynamos days, Rosie (fabulous as ever Lara Mulcahy) and Tanya (new recruit, the brilliant Jennifer Vuletic). The disconcertingly orthodox Sophie wants her father to give her away and this presents a problem: he could be one of three men of whom a youthful Donna wrote “dot-dot-dot” notations in her diary, signifying an activity with each that she didn’t want to commit to paper. Unknown to Donna, Sophie has invited each of her putative dads to the wedding. Everyone turns up on the island and Donna has a severe attack of conniptions. Cue a rolling revue of Abba’s oeuvre.
Although the show is sold visually on yoof – the poster image is Sophie and the lavish souvenir program is heavy on the youngsters of the village and taverna – the heart and soul of Mamma Mia! is lifelong female friendship; and its core is Donna. Although each of the principals, Mulcahy and Vuletic, has her showstopper number and they’re both fabulous in their roles, it’s Donna who has to be the heartstopper. Once upon a time Anne Wood did this with sheer lungpower and the chutzpah to belt out the big numbers with charm and conviction. Ten years on, the charm and conviction come from a different place. She is, literally, a decade older – with all the life experience, ups and downs and sweet and sour implied by that – and she now has a daughter who is three and, if you’ve read the trash mags about her adventures, her life is as unconventional as she once played it.
On top of that, Wood has spoken of the effect of seeing the 2008 movie, with Meryl Streep in her role, and realising the power of acting Donna as well as singing it. That made her want to take it on again, and it’s the qualitative difference between then and now. In her 2009 performance Wood’s belting top notes are gone; in their place is a voice that conveys Donna’s journey from the outside in, as well as through the songs. There is more depth and nuance and sensitivity in her singing voice; and a deeply felt character that provokes sniffles and the shock of recognition in mothers, daughters, friends and sisters alike.
Robert Grubb, Michael Cormick and Peter Hardy are particularly strong in this production as the possible dads, while David Somerville is a credible suitor and nice guy for Sophie, rather than a catwalk model or prancing, crotch-massaging chorus boy. The show is played for laughs – is frankly conscious of its comic cuts style – and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. But without Donna as its heart, it would probably have turned out to be a much more flimsy thing, that could not possibly have gone the distance.
