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Jukebox jive

A theater hit that should've stayed there
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 6th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
All wet. Prizes for the first person who can find choreography in this picture. It's all part of Mamma Mia!
Mamma Mia!


Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
With Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Amanda Seyfried, Christine Baranski and Stellan Skarsgaard
“Jukebox musical” is a handy theatrical term for a stage musical that is built around existing songs, usually by a single singer, composer or group. Some aspire to be book musicals, and are different from musical revues, such as Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris or Side by Side by Sondheim. Though most jukebox musicals are mere exercises in nostalgia, a few possess a substantial narrative, such as Buddy, based on the life of Buddy Holly, and the powerful Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp Movin’ Out, which might be better classed as a jukebox ballet.
Mamma Mia! is a classic example of a jukebox musical, as it has a storyline that was cobbled together to support, however tremulously, the ’70s songbook of the Swedish soft-rock band ABBA. It opened in London’s West End nine years ago, and is still packing them in at the Prince of Wales Theatre. It also continues to play to SRO crowds at Ziegfeld’s old Winter Garden Theater on Broadway. As cinema seems to have returned to robbing the stage for musical material, Mamma Mia! was a perfect candidate for film.
The musical actually has cinematic pedigree, though the creators are loath to draw attention to the progenitor. What they tout as “original” nonetheless bears a very striking resemblance to a funny little farce from 1968, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, which stars Gina Lollobrigida, Shelley Winters, Phil Silvers and Peter Lawford. The story concerned an Italian woman who had selflessly entertained Allied troops during the war, and then found herself pregnant. The father had to be one of three soldiers, all of whom had returned to their country of origin. Twenty years later, the woman has told everyone, including her illegitimate daughter, that she’s a soldier’s widow, and assumed the name Campbell — inspired, like Warhol, by a soup can. Suddenly she finds the three possible fathers back in her village for a reunion.
Mamma Mia!’s story, with a few alterations, is basically the same. The location this time is Greece, the mother a 50ish survivor of either the ’60s or ’70s (the film’s designers seem confused on this point) and the illegitimate love child fully aware of her three potential fathers. Having got the plot, one need only tack on ABBA songs that might fit particular scenes. (As an aside, it should be noted that there was a Lerner and Lane musical, 1979’s Carmelina, based directly on Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, that flopped on Broadway, though the show produced many wonderful songs.)
Mamma Mia!’s setup has daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried as an exhibition of teeth) contacting her three would-be fathers, inviting them to attend her wedding. Her plan is to discover which of the men is her real dad, without her mother, Donna (Meryl Streep), knowing until the time is right. The three — Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgaard) — duly arrive, thinking Donna has invited them. In no time, ABBA’s song “S.O.S.” will be wafting through the olive groves.
There are a number of reasons this film version of Mamma Mia! is insufferable. The first is the shoddy construction of the stage show itself, where songs are grafted onto action, rather than rising organically from it. In one scene, Donna’s best friends, Rosie and Tanya (the squandered Julie Walters and Christine Baranski), try to cheer her up. They begin to trill “Chiquitita” to her, which leads you to believe that perhaps this is a term of endearment between the friends. But to give that some foundation or introduction, the name should be used elsewhere in the dialogue. It isn’t. “Chiquitita” is simply the only song that could be scrounged up from the songbook to fit the moment, however awkwardly.
The film’s primary problem, though, is with Phyllida Lloyd, the original stage director of the musical. Lloyd hasn’t much experience with film, and it shows here glaringly. Her all-singing, all-mugging epic fully proves that more is not more. It’s two hours of unrelenting, over-rehearsed glee. It is superficially exuberant, and exhausting for being so. The tainted ham tactics are obviously a style choice of Lloyd’s, but the wrong one, as it cannot help but read as the company not trusting the material (however thin) enough to try it without making faces.
The choreography is effortful — scrapped humps and bumps from Saturday Night Fever, complete with group skips and hops. The singing is passable — just. Streep has had some training, and, although she’s no Jennifer Hudson, she belts out the 11 o’clock number, “The Winner Takes it All,” with some aplomb. But the rest … Mamma Mia!? Dio mio!

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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