Mamma Mia! completes ABBA season

If you have loved ABBA music for ages, then it is time now to thumb your noses up in the air at everybody who ever called their songs mere fluff that will not last and should be dismissed as only nonsense and of no consequence. Why, those naysayers are now probably drowning in over 40-year-old ABBA hit songs that unlike them, are as fresh and sparkly as ever. And enjoying it.

It was the showing of the movie Mamma Mia! Here I Go Again a few months ago that started the ABBA craze this year. Both a prequel and a sequel to the joyous box-office blockbuster Mamma Mia! film of 10 years ago, Here I Go Again was also a scintillating piece of work with lots of loving and dancing to what has become one of Sweden’s biggest export over the years, the songs created and popularized by the group ABBA. 

Then there came the forever young and beautiful pop goddess Cher. The Academy award-winning actress appeared in Mamma Mia! Here I Go Again as a glamorous granny singing Fernando. She so fell in love with ABBA music while at work that she decided to record an album made up entirely of ABBA songs. So now we have a new album by Cher titled Dancing Queen. And what do you know, not one of the cuts sound like it came from Sweden nearly 50 years ago. 

The ABBA songs sound so new and so glorious. This album is Europop brought up to date with modern arrangements and they all seem like they were composed by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus expressly for Cher. I tell you every track in Dancing Queen just gets better and better with every listen. Dancing Queen, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight), The Name Of The Game, SOS, Waterloo, Mamma Mia, Chiquitita, Fernando, The Winner Takes It All and One Of Us.

If you think those are all that you will be getting from the ageless ABBA this year, then I say you are grossly mistaken. This is because now back for another run in Manila is the stage musical Mamma Mia! A cast from London is now performing to full houses and lots of standing ovations at The Theatre in Solaire. Mark you, they will be there only up to Oct. 21. So hurry up and get your tickets if you want to catch this one.

A romantic comedy that conjures up a sun-kissed summer spent on an island in Greece, Mamma Mia! strings together the hit songs of ABBA into one thoroughly enjoyable musical. Written by Catherine Johnson, directed by Phyllida Lloyd with choreography by Anthony Van Laast, it opened in London’s West End in 1999 and has since then gone on to Broadway and everywhere to become one of the most successful jukebox musicals of all time. A jukebox musical is one that is made up of previously composed and recorded songs, most of them like ABBA’s big hits.

It tells the story of Sophie, a young girl who is in search of her father and invited her three possible Dads to her wedding at the Greek island that her mother owns. This, of course, shocked Donna, her mother who was formerly the frontman of a girl band named Donna & the Dynamos and was quite romantically adventurous in her youth. How she faced up to her three lovers and emerged strong and beautiful from the experience is what Mamma Mia! is about. 

The plot may sound complicated but it works out to a simple happy end for everybody after lots of laughter, some tears and love all around for family and friends. And best of all lots of spirited singing and dancing of ABBA songs.

 Time now indeed for another round of Honey Honey, Money Money Money, Thank You For The Music, Mamma Mia, Lay All Your Love On Me, Super Trouper, Voulez-Vous, Under Attack, SOS, Your Mother Should Know, Knowing Me Knowing You, One Last Summer, Slipping Through My Fingers, Take A Chance On Me and many others. And woe to all those who will not join in the singing and the dancing that happen spontaneously at the end of the show.

Mamma Mia! is presented in Manila by Lunchbox Theatrical Productions, TicketWorld and Concertus Manila.