The storyline is mercifully simple, and never meanders too much before the next ABBA banger. 20-year-old Sophie Sheridan (Sarah Krndija) helps her mum, the determindely single Donna (Elise McCann), run a taverna on a Greek island. Sophie has found mum’s diary and worked out that three blokes might be the father she’s never known – so she invites them all to her upcoming wedding to Sky (Lewis Francis).
Hilarity ensues, much of it provided by the supporting cast. The three potential fathers find comedy gold in rediscovering their lost youths, with Drew Livingston especially warm as bumbling English banker Harry Bright – his Our Last Summer duet with McCann was an innocent delight.
Also in Greece for the wedding are Donna’s friends Rosie (Bianca Bruce) and gold-digging triple-divorcee Tanya (Deone Zanotto), whose cougarish come-ons to young barman Pepper (a back-flipping Jordan Tomjenovic) on Does Your Mother Know won by the far the night’s biggest ovation, helped by some very sharp ensemble choreography.
As thin and old-fashioned as the plot is, it did have a knack for finding depth in ABBA’s fairly superficial songs, helped by the odd lyrical change as approved by Björn Ulvaeus himself. The Donna-Sophie duet on Slipping Through My Fingers is likely to have any parent in the audience choking up, while McCann’s melodramatic delivery of The Winner Takes It All gives at least some context to the subsequent, sudden crumbling of her ‘I don’t need a man’ attitude. Meanwhile the eternally pointless Fernando is dispatched in under ten seconds.
But of course no context is required for the likes of Thankyou For The Music and Take A Chance On Me to produce serotonin in their listeners. The production recognised this with frequent group harmonies that encouraged the urge to sing along, and a three-song curtain call where we could all finally get our ABBA on with abandon.
Mamma Mia! The Musical is at Sydney Lyric until July 30, then Brisbane’s QPAC Lyric Theatre from August 6 and Melbourne’s Princess Theatre from October 4.