Mamma Mia - The Musical

[Loonman]

Call me a a hater, because I thought Cats was an insult to T.S. Eliot, and Le Miz is bombastic baloney, but who would spend money to go see this?


They keep showing the same ad thay had on last year with the same frumpy people dancing in the aisles at a London show.

I can think of maybe 1 or 2 ABBA songs that don't trigger my gag reflex, but c'mon.

[GR]

1. I Don't Know About The Ad But The Show Is Great, In My Opinion...

I saw it here in Kansas City and it was wonderful...But of course, if you don't like ABBA, you wouldn't like it...

To each his own...

[phillybri]

2. I actually kinda liked it...

...but then again, I'm probably not as high-brow as you are.

[Loonman]

3. I'm not highbrow at all

But I have a hard time liking musicals if I am not in them.


I even hate Oklahoma!

[salvorhardin]

4. ABBA is interesting

When I was 13 I absolutely loved ABBA. There was something about their music that seemed to reach out and grab me; especially their songs Waterloo, Knowing Me Knowing You and (though I'm loathe to admit it) Supertrouper. I thought Fernando was corny even then. I liked it though. I don't know why, I couldn't even begin to tell you. Suffice it to say, at that age I also grooved on Laura Branigan's Gloria amongst other tunes that most people would be embarassed to admit ever liking. We're talking 1982 here.

A couple years back, in a fit of nostalgia I bought the ABBA box set Thanks For All the Music. It was a kick to hear all those tunes again, and whatever one says about ABBA's music, it was brilliantly constructed and quite complex for AM Top 40 pop. However, I'd hazzard that 90% of it was absolutely unlistenable anymore. None-the-less, I ripped the CDs to my HD. Someday I'll get around to hacking together that PERL script to play my music files according to weightings I assign them in config files. I can assure you that the ABBA tunes will be assigned to play in extremely light rotation.

All that being said, one work that stays with me to this day is the musical that Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson wrote with Tim Rice doing lyrics, Chess. The 1986 London concept recording is my favorite version. What a great musical! A wonderfully complex (for a musical) plot line, a good mixture of musical styles and some really memorable lyrics. I fear it may be a little dated, appearing as it did at the tail end of the cold war, but I still listen to the whole thing at least several times a year. Anthem remains my personal definition of what patriotism really means.

I have to agree with you though on Andrew Lloyd Weber. I'm nowhere near as critical of Cats as you appear to be, but I feel that Cats sort of marked the end of his career. Phantom had exactly how many tunes in it, repeated ad-nauseum? Two? Three? I haven't seen Sunset Boulevard, so I may be unduly harsh. I hear it was pretty good.

Also, I'm not in a position to comment on Les Miserables. Yet, I think what you might be reacting to is not so much the shows, but what Broadway and musicals in general have had to do to survive in the age of Hollywood SFX and CGI spectaculars. Audiences have become so conditioned to visual effects and a shortened attention span that I doubt a newly written show staged like The Fantasticks could even be mounted today. Maybe I'm being hypercritical.

[Whitacre D_WI]

5. On the plus side...

..."Mamma Mia" features NO songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Making it one of the best musicals currently running.

[Loonman]

6. Forgot about that!

There's a plus!

[Whitacre D_WI]

8. Just wait till...

"Exit Flagger: the Songs of Robert Pollard!" comes out in 20 years.

[ronnykmarshall]

7. I've seen it twice.

It's fun show.

My parents love ABBA because they were popular when they were dating. (mom and step-dad)

We saw the show in Vegas and loved it. For mother's day we saw it again here in LA.

Plus there's some major hot guys SHIRTLESS in the show!