Mamma Mia!
The hit musical Mamma Mia! finally comes to Singapore. This is the opening weekend at the Esplanade, and the theatre was packed for the Saturday afternoon matinee.
It took some creative writer to put together a musical using only songs from Abba - it was one of those innovations that became obvious once someone else has thought of it. The music covered happy and sad situations, and lends itself well to dancing, falling in love and breaking up. It had all the necessary parts of a good story, just waiting for someone to put together a script.
The skeleton of this story is of a young bride-to-be who invites her mother’s three ex-lovers to her wedding, in hopes of finding out which one is her biological father. The visit of these gentlemen evokes the mother’s memories of her younger days, when she wild and free.
It doesn’t take much of a story to allow for great dancing and singing, and its easy to recall how much fun Abba songs used to be. From the perennial favourites - Dancing Queen and Waterloo - to the melancholic tunes of I Have a Dream. By the end of the show, the whole audience was cheering and clapping - a rare event in Singapore theatres.