“Mamma Mia” is, in many respects, an old-fashioned musical. There’s just enough dialogue to keep the songs from running together. Great acting is unnecessary. Bring on the singers and dancers, with a score that is completely familiar as it works on its second generation of excited young people. So what’s not to like? Well, maybe the green, seaweed-like or cloud-like thing that floats over the stage from time to time. A punster would note that perhaps it looks like kelp and the theater might have welcomed a visit from a kelptomaniac.
Even maturing (certainly not old) curmudgeons felt cheered and comfortable last night as the show opened at the Fox, where it will entertain through Sunday. The score, by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, is tuneful, easily hummable and well-performed, and Catherine Johnson’s book is simple and traditional. She provides a story that will appeal to young people and older ones. She treats love as something we all have to live with, and the young heroine, Sophie (Chloe Tucker) finds one way to deal with it while her Mom, Donna (Kaye Tuckerman) and her buddies, Tanya (Alison Ewing) and Rosie (Mary Callanan) look at it in another, sensible, often bawdy manner.
Donna runs a taverna on a Greek island and has reared Sophie as a single Mom. Sophie, who doesn’t know her Dad’s identity, is about to get married. She finds Donna’s diary, notes her involvement with three men in the same summer that Sophie was conceived, and sends wedding invitations to an American architect, Sam (Christian Whelan); an English banker, Harry (Paul DeBoy, a regular and welcome visitor to the Rep); and an Australian travel writer, Bill (Brian Ray Norris, filling in for John-Michael Zuerlein)
Having seen “Mamma” many times,and realizing that, as the old song goes, “If you don’t see Mamma every night, then you can’t see Mamma at all,” I was impressed by Tuckerman, who delivered one of the angrier portrayals of Donna that I’ve seen. It was very effective, but it occasionally clashes with the tone of Johnson’s writing. Ewing and Callahan are over-the-top funny, and Tucker is cute and earnest. The fathers are solid, fighting hard to keep their characters from becoming trite.
That’s not easy, since this company has been on the road for more than a year, visiting more than 100 cities, some of them twice. The Broadway version has been running more than 10 years, the London production more than 12, though it’s scheduled to move to a smaller theater after the Olympics next summer. It’s an enjoyable evening of musical theater, with plenty of effective song and dance which is, at the end of the day, exactly what musical theater is all about.
Mamma Mia! opened last night at the Fox and will run through Nov. 27
— Joe