This week Moonlight Musicals’ production of “Mamma Mia!” premiered at the Moonlight Musicals Amphitheatre in Lubbock. The play was written by Catherine Johnson with music and lyrics by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA.
Alright, confession time: I have never seen Mamma Mia! in any form. I somehow, even though I quite enjoy a musical, just never got around to seeing this one. It could be because I’m not the biggest ABBA fan in the world, but who knows? I went in knowing almost nothing of the story.
Double confession time: I hadn’t seen a show at Moonlight Musicals in probably a decade. I was told I should bring a chair and did not. I really should have brought a chair. That being said, if you plan on going to see this show, you should bring a chair.
Okay, now that that is out of the way, I can talk about the show. It was a lot of fun! There were some issues here and there, and we’ll get to some of them in a bit, but overall I think the energy and work that went into putting on a great show was evident.
The story concerns Sophie, played by Madeleine Hale, who is getting married. She wants her father to come to the wedding and give her away, but she doesn’t know who her father is. So, after snooping through her mother’s diary, she narrows it down to three suspects. She goes ahead and invites all three of them, hoping to recognize which one is her father when she sees him. Without giving too much away, things do not necessarily go as planned and a bunch of hijinks ensue.
Hale puts on a great performance. I’ve never seen her in anything before, but she was able to capture the hope and innocence that I feel Sophie should have and also just sang so dang well. Seriously, the show might be worth seeing just to hear all of her parts.
Deanna Hurt plays Sophie’s mother, Donna. Donna is not as excited to see the three men as Sophie is and sings quite a few songs about it. Hurt does a pretty good job, holding her own for the most part, but her performance is not quite as compelling as Hale’s. She still shines (literally, in a gold and silver outfit straight out of the 70’s at one point) in a number of songs, particularly in Dancing Queen. Her friends, played by Teresa Moore and Briana Moody, have to force her to get up and dance and while she joins them, she does so reluctantly. I really enjoyed her not-dancing dancing. I promise that makes sense once you’ve seen it.
Speaking of Moore and Moody, they were hilarious. Moore, after being hit on by a much younger man, sings “Does Your Mother Know?” and it’s just great. Really funny and the dancing in that number is especially cool (special shout out to Oliva Rojas and Zach Taylor who absolutely killed it). Moody, who I worked with in a show in 2017, was awesome. She was, in my opinion, the funniest character and I really dug her whole vibe.
The dads all had their standout moments as well. Colin Hale (Madeleine Hale’s actual father!) as Bill and Mike Meister as Harry are both very funny, affecting accents that I couldn’t decide were fake or not. Jeremy Barbee as Sam, though, is the standout amongst the men in the show. His voice cracked a few times early on, but when he got going, he really went. His rendition of “Knowing Me, Knowing You” was particularly well done.
I think the stage director Frank Rendon and musical director Chris Jorns did an awesome job. There were little breaks in the acting here and there, but for the most part I wasn’t taken out of the show. You can tell they both put a lot of time to get the this to a great place.
Now comes the issues I had. Almost all of my problems lie in the audio. Not the band (an actual live band, which was very cool) but the mics and levels were all over the place. There were times when characters who were wearing microphones couldn’t be heard at all. Then, on a few occasions, mics were left on and you could hear actors talking quietly back stage. I think these problems will surely be fixed for upcoming performances, but they are worth mentioning.
As for the music itself, it’s fun. If you are an ABBA fan I’m sure it would be even more so. I only really know “Dancing Queen” and like one or two lines from “Mamma Mia!” so I couldn’t really sing along. Speaking of which, the performance I went to encouraged the audience to participate even having a QR code in the playbill that would give you the lyrics. This is only allowed on the Thursday performances, so if you’re a superfan you should go to one of those.
The idea was really cool, but I’m not sure how many people actually took advantage of it. I was way up front and didn’t really look back, so I’m not sure, but I did not hear many people around me singing along. I could have just been in the we-only-kind-of-like-ABBA section though.
There was one exception to this. During the bows, musical director Jorns actually stood up and more or less told us to sing with him, and people did do that. In fact there was a whole extra song and dance after the bows. It was pretty cool, maybe even one of the best dances in the show.
Speaking of dancing, there is a ton of it, which makes sense both from a musical stand point and an ABBA stand point. The choreography by Amy Cox was pretty cool. Not all of it was super flashy (though there were those bits too) but it fit the story well and really utilized the set (which was also very well done). One of the dances, the one that includes Hurt, Moore, and Moody donning the gold and silver costumes, (by Jill Johnstone and Hannah Morgan) was especially neat, using the different floors of the set and the stairs to good effect.
All in all “Mamma Mia!” was fun. It has a couple of kinks that I’m hopeful will be worked out. It is worth checking out, for sure.
The show will run August 9, 10, 15-17, and 22-24 at 8 PM. More information on Moonlight Musicals is available at moonlightmusicals.com and be sure to check out our local arts and culture program, 24 Frames, for more stories on performing arts.
