Musings: Mamma Mia!

You could feel the estrogen in the room when Frack and I went with our friend Melanie (Melanie's lovely daughter was at the beach) to see Mamma Mia! this weekend. I think I'm one of the few North American women who has not seen this show live, so everything was new to me.

Surprisingly, the ABBA songs adapt themselves very well to the plot. The short version: Donna (Meryl Streep) has a lovely 20-year-old daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) who will be getting married tomorrow. Sophie has never known her father. After finding and reading Donna's diary from the summer she was conceived, Sophie finds that dear old dad could be one of three men: Bill Andersson, a Swedish writer (Stellan Skarsgård), Harry Bright, a British banker (Colin Firth), or Sam Carmichael, an American architect and Donna's long-lost love (Pierce Brosnan). Hilarity and song-filled mayhem ensue when Donna and her two best buds, Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters) try to navigate the stormy waters of true love, cold feet, old love, and new possibilities.

Mamma Mia! is what they call a jukebox musical, a story crafted to string unrelated songs together. Of course, writer Christine Johnson has plenty to work from with ABBA's deep catalog, and it's fun to see how old favorites like "Dancing Queen," "SOS," and, of course, "Mamma Mia!" make their appearances in the story. Considering that these are pop songs recorded by a Swedish supergroup back in the 70s, it's amazing how adaptable the lyrics are to dramatic situations.

It's fun. A singalong, practically, if you're like me and wore out your cassette tape of ABBA's Greatest Hits back in the 70s. Pack the tissue, girls. If you can watch the sequence to "Slipping Through My Fingers" without crying, you have a heart of stone. And stay for the credits. Four words: Leading men, disco suits.