REVIEW: Mamma Mia! (Novello Theatre, London)

(Photo of the London 2022-2023 cast of Mamma Mia! by Brinkhoff/Mögenburg)

I must admit, jukebox musicals are usually either a massive hit or miss for me, with newer jukebox musicals veering more towards a miss thanks to the way plot points seem to be shoehorned to fit whatever Top 40 charting pop song the producers could afford the rights to. More and more new jukebox musicals seem to fit together with spit, prayer, and layers of vocal harmonies, a la Glee, eclipsing suddenly into song in a way that feels almost comical and occasionally even cringey.

Mamma Mia! escapes this fate completely. The music, a playlist of ABBA’s greatest hits, fits into the show so organically, it’s hard to believe that they weren’t written specifically for the show, bringing just the right amount of pep, romance, and anguish to the show exactly when they need to.

The musical, which debuted on the West End in 1999, charts bright-eyed 20 year old Sophie Sheridan’s search for her father before she weds fiancé Skye on the fictional Greek island of Kalokairi. The only catch? She doesn’t know who her father is. Skimming through one of her mother Donna’s diaries, she finds three possible candidates, Sam Carmichael, Harry Bright, and Bill Austin, and invites them to her wedding, confidently telling her bridesmaids that she’ll be able to recognise her father when she sees him. She’s soon proven wrong, and the men’s arrival revives old ghosts for Donna, who’s convinced that they’ve shown up to derail Sophie’s wedding. By the time the show concludes, the matter of the biological father is forgotten, and the three men each agree to be a third of Sophie’s father, and Donna receives a surprise proposal.

A personal performance highlight was Mazz Murray as Donna Sheridan. Murray’s emotion-filled portrayal of Donna, as Sophie’s mother and as a woman who genuinely loved Sam, regularly breaks your heart, and her rendition of ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ and ‘The Winner Takes It All’ brought tears to many eyes in the theatre.

The performance of Mamma Mia! I attended marked Olivia Lallo’s cover debut as Sophie. Lallo’s sweet portrayal of a Sophie that was in over her head, watching her scheme run further and further out of her control, added to the comedy.

(Photo of the London 2022-2023 cast of Mamma Mia! by Brinkhoff/Mögenburg)

While the story and music of Mamma Mia! is, quite frankly, timeless, its set is less so. The set itself is brutally simple, a two-piece, manually-rotated facade of a white Greek villa set in a blue wave-walled box. It has just as many fly pieces, one of them a treetop with bulbed lights that looks like it would belong in a high school production than it would on a West End stage. The set was designed in the 1990s and it shows. That said, its simplicity does add to the show’s charm in a slightly endearing manner, the way dated visual effects in a vintage film does.

Mamma Mia! is a bright, fun, carefree romp through a soap opera-esque storyline set on a sunny Greek island, and is one hell of a ride, culminating in an exhilarating three song encore of ‘Mamma Mia’, ‘Dancing Queen’, and ‘Waterloo’ filled with dazzling Lycra costumes in which the audience is encouraged to get up and dance. Save for travelling back in time, this is the closest many of us will get to dancing at an ABBA concert.

Mamma Mia! currently plays at London’s Novello Theatre. Tickets can be bought at mamma-mia.com/london.php

Rush tickets are available daily on the TodayTix app.