My break from the theatre has been long enough, I can’t just not go to the theatre because I don’t want to lose my memories of the Vertical Hour, so I went tonight. Unplanned, impulsive – business as usual.
And I know I said I hated musicals, I do, Spamalot was the exception. But I had to check out Mama Mia after all those film rumours.
It’s hard to go wrong with a musical containing loads of Abba hits everybody knows. The Prince of Wales Theatre really is a beautiful theatre and the stage design was splendid. And the first half of the musical was absolutely excellent, very funny, a lot of funky songs and an absolute pleasure to watch.
The second half however suffered from the “what shall we do in the middle” syndrome. It completely lost it’s pace, it had a very unlucky choice of songs (slow and unknown) and I was about to fall asleep. The second half never really got up to speed, which is a shame, as there were interesting enough cast members in the musical who could easily have saved it from slowly sinking in the blue Greek waters. That you leave the theatre with a feelgood feeling anyway is because they smartly programmed Dancing Queen and Mama Mia as the finale.
Let’s hope they edit the script for the film quite a bit to prevent it from having the same problem.
And talking about the film, let’s cut to the chase. The story is simple : girl is going to get married but doesn’t know who her father is. There are 3 potential candidates and she invites them all three to her wedding to find out.
I could easily imagine Meryl Streep playing the mother (who does most of the singing in the musical) she will do great. And Sam (one of the fathers) will be played by Pierce Brosnan which is very well casted too and a close cast to the London musical Sam. The father to watch for me was Harry. And this father in the musical I saw tonight: wears thick rimmed glasses, has rock legs, shakes a leg pretty well, plays the guitar, is quite a singer and is the absolute funniest of the three. Thinking about who could play him in the film, well I couldn’t come up with anyone better either, so let’s hope that the rumour becomes true and that it fits in in schedules because then we really have something to look forward to.
(Notice how I smartly managed to not mention his name in this post!)
Honey honey, touch me, baby, ah-hah, honey honey
Honey honey, hold me, baby, ah-hah, honey honey
You look like a movie star
(You look like a movie star)
But I know just who you are
(I know just who you are)
And, honey, to say the least,
you’re a doggone beast
Tickets : Mama Mia London
“what shall we do in the middle” syndrome – I’m still laughing!!
(yes, very clever of you to skip his name – but we all know who you’re referring to LOL)
(that should be ‘whom’, not ‘who’ – never mind)
I can’t get on with musicals either which is why I am not looking forward to the new Depp/Rickman/Burton Sweeney Todd though of course I HAVE to see it!
I have recently volunteered to help at our local hall which shows films and am-drams. Last night I did the bar for “Titanic – The Musical” I resisted the desire to offer ice in the drinks in the interval;) I must admit that I only just peeped through the door a couple of times to see the musical because somehow a musical about a load of people drowning at sea seemed a tiny bit sick!LOL Still , apparently it did well on Broadway….
I went to see this when I was dating a Swedish girl. You’re right that the theatre is beautiful but it was full of Swedish people. Very odd !
When I was there there were a lot of foreigners (I am one myself) as well. It really seems to be quite popular, impressive that they still sell out after this long running time.
Did you like it?