If you check my post you'll notice that I didn't say a word about the score. I knew it was ABBA music -- I remember the original songs when they came out. The problem with the show was the pathetic excuse for a book and the utterly incompetent way the ABBA songs are shoe-horned into it. That anyone thought it was a good idea to take a lame unfunny Gina Lollabrigida movie from the '60's ("Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell") and use it as the basis for a musical is beyond me, but then to randomly toss moldy ABBA tunes into it with all the skill and dramaturgical ability of a blind and tone deaf monkey was simply jaw-dropping. The book writer didn't even TRY to fashion a book in which the ABBA songs could be used to advance plot and/or inform character (Oscar Hammerstein II is probably turning over and laughing himself silly in his grave).
Understand, there are plenty of revues and light entertainments that I've thoroughly enjoyed over the years, but they at least were put together with care and expertise and sense of professionalism. What I saw at "Mamma Mia" was laughable incompetence. Perhaps great singing would have helped to cover up the flaws, but the cast they haad for the road company sounded like a bunch of folks they grabbed from a local karaoke bar (and, no exaggeration, I've heard MUCH better singing -- of ABBA, no less -- in karaoke bars). That they were charging $90 for that crap was criminal (thankfully my friend and I were comped).
The funny thing is, I wasn't alone in my feelings about the show. From my side box seat at the National Theatre in DC, I had a clear view of all the folks sitting in the orchestra section as well as the mezzanine and wow, there were a LOT of bored looking people in the audience. I counted a couple of dozen people who were asleep in the second act and all sorts of folks who looked pissed off as lame joke after lame joke landed with a thud (there was very little laughter from the audience during the whole show and only perfunctory applause after each number). By the time the "concert" rolled around at the end, I was one of dozens fleeing out the exit doors into the street -- it was a damn stampede of people trying to get OUT of that theatre. A truly terrible waste of an evening.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
