Mama Mia the Musical
Princess Theatre, Melbourne
I should open up by being completely transparent. This is not one of my favourite musicals.
It’s silly. I’m not really into silly. I love ABBA though (who doesn’t) and I have a tween who loves silly. We have a theatre group including her friends, parents who have become friends and family. 25 of us went to the matinee this week to celebrate the end of the school year. As with all big groups, a lot of effort and time goes into the planning, so by the time we got there it was a deep breath of relief when we sat down. The Monash had an especially bad day and a couple of our group missed the first ten minutes but eventually we settled into the fun.
So, deep and loud exhale and we settled into watch the show (not as easy as it sounds because we were in the middle of a party audience (more on that in another post). The story is just plain silly and as one of the tweens put, a tad inappropriate, but I admire the creativity. It is simply a vehicle for the songs and the songs are awesome. It was a good, fun, silly, frivolous show and I found some joy in the silly. We were in the stalls, centre but at the back with a low roof so there were times when the sound quality wasn’t great and while the singing was good, the quality and volume could have been better. The chorography was energetic, and the energy was great. At intermission my tween wasn’t impressed (“It’s ok Mum”), but by the finale she was dancing up a storm. The ending is especially joyous and fun and offers that beautiful light relief that only live musicals seem to provide (tome anyway).
It was fun, light, joyous, lovely, precious and yes, very, very silly. Just what we all needed!
