By BRUCE DENNILL
Mamma Mia! / Directed by Janice Honeyman / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways, Johannesburg
It’s not often that a major production returns to a stage it occupied just a couple of years before (certainly in the South African system, where big stage musicals run for a couple of months at a time rather than the much longer residencies of Broadway or the West End). That Mamma Mia! barely skipped a year after a successful 2024 run is testament to its reputation for having a feel-good buzz and the undying appeal of its score, which comprises most of the biggest hits of Seventies pop behomoths ABBA – songs that, thanks to being the soundtracks to endless parties and the centrepieces of untold numbers of dubious karaoke evenings, have never fallen out of fashion and which are known, word for word, by three generations of fans (at least).
Despite being far younger than many of the musical world’s biggest hitters (it debuted in 1999, in London), Mamma Mia! is up near the top of the most successful stage shows, of any kind, in history, with 70 million-plus people having seen it.
All of this makes it a relatively safe bet for a fresh visit, particularly with a cast that features some of the biggest established (Amra-Faye Wright as Donna; Samantha Peo as Tanya) and up-and-coming (Leah Mari – fresh off Pretty Woman and The Sound Of Music – as Sophie) names in local musical theatre. Having Wright back on a South African stage is a particular thrill for anyone aware of the scale of her achievements on Broadway, and there is a nostalgic pleasure in her re-connection with Peo after the two actresses’ formidable partnership as Velma and Roxy in the South African debut of the musical Chicago in 2005.
What remains a challenge for audiences hoping for more than a sunny, good-looking jukebox is a script that, even by musical standards, feels like a hard sell as a vaguely believable story, with the fallout of decades of relationship history squashed into a couple of days and songs sometimes shoe-horned into spaces not at all custom-designed to receive them, possibly to maximise the undoubted appeal of the music regardless of its context.
The relatively simplistic character studies in Catherine Johnson’s script often stand in stark contrast to the probably under-appreciated (they make it sound so easy) complexity of Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus’ songwriting, which requires singers to begin melodies in unexpected places and to get sophisticated phrasing and time signatures exactly right in order to, paradoxically, make the music sound as accessible as it does to its millions of fans. The live band, marshalled by Daniel Butcher-Geddes, does an excellent job on the instrumental side.
The apex of the impact of a lot of singing – the score features 25 songs – is when Donna, against a backdrop of whispered excitement from fans who know what to expect, performs The Winner Takes It All deep in the second act. Wright, sensibly performing well within herself to that point (the show is a big sing and this Joburg run follows straight on the heels of a Cape Town staging) leans into the big notes here, offering a taste of what earned her 80-foot-Times Square-poster status in New York.
Peo appears to take a great deal of mischievous delight in Tanya’s antics and Lindy Abromowitz as the cheerful, generous Rosie gives perhaps the best performance of the night, personifying the joy for which many people love the production. Leah Mari is, as ever, confident and eye-catching and a gorgeous supporting cast fill the stage with movement, colour and impossibly defined six-packs.
There are a few distractions in the occasional slipping of the accents the cast are expected to utilise – presumably a condition of licensing the show; there would be little or no negative effect on the story if the actors could speak more naturally – and some stuttering chemistry where the story would have you believe that the characters involved are misplaced soulmates. For folks who have gone to see beautiful women in unfeasibly flamboyant catsuits and young men who don’t seem to understand how buttons work bouncing around to Top 40 hits, though, such quibbles may not matter.