Stage Review: "Mamma Mia!" is silly effervescence, with heart, too

Maybe I'm getting soft, or maybe it was the general euphoria of the day after the election, but I had a lot of fun at Wednesday's opening of a shortened visit by the tour of the ABBA musical, "Mamma Mia!"

It's actually a full week of eight performances, but the Cultural Trust and the tour opted to forego the usual Tuesday night opening, so as not to compete with our larger national drama. Instead they added a Thursday matinee. (As of Wednesday night, that added matinee was the only performance that wasn't selling at the 90 percent level "Mamma Mia" expects, but I'd say it was still the right choice.)

I was hardly alone Wednesday in my happy response to this silly, engaging musical, bedecked as it is with the bubblegum '70s bounce of the ABBA songbook: Even as the show passed the 2½-hour mark, the dominantly-female audience of young and old was on its feet, clapping along and welcoming yet another encore. There wasn't the mass dancing in the aisles "Mamma Mia!" used to get, but this was the Pittsburgh equivalent -- and you don't usually get such an enthusiastic response to a fourth visit.

Even though the tour was previously here in 2002, 2004 and 2006, it doesn't feel at all old, tired or robotic. Mainly, it feels fresh, without which, of course, such silly froth could easily curdle.

The story, as you probably know, finds Sophie about to marry Sky on the Greek island where her single mother, Donna, runs a hotel and taverna. Sophie secretly invites her mother's three lovers from 21 years earlier, determined to find out which is her father. Meanwhile, Donna invites Tanya and Rosie, with whom she once formed an ABBA-like singing group, complete with garish costumes. You probably know all this from the movie, which I haven't seen yet, though I hear the performances vary a good deal.

Throw in a gaggle of Sophie's young friends and Donna's young taverna staff and you have a bright, bouncy company of some 26, filling the simple set with song and dance. There don't actually seem to be any Greeks on this island, or any tourists, either, except for the wedding party, but hey, it's a musical.

The numbers rarely feel starry, except for Donna's. Instead, just about every song builds gradually into an ensemble number, even the solos or duets where the ensemble chimes in from offstage, swelling the sound.

The show is really about the music, wave after wave of cheery, effervescent pop. It's almost dangerously insidious -- "Dancing Queen" has camped out between my ears, with occasional surges by other songs that seem like more of the same -- but it certainly does engender good feeling. Or maybe on this night, the score just sounded better than ever because of the obvious high spirits of the audience.

The printed program doesn't declare it to be an Equity company, so I was surprised (and even worried) at how good it is. But it turns out it is indeed a full Equity tour, as its quality argues it must be.

Susie McMonagle's Donna is sympathetic and then radiant as the worried, resentful mother who recovers her art and her heart, as well. Rose Sezniak's Sophie feels Valley Girl superficial, though she deepens some as the show goes on. Michele Dawson and Kittra Wynn Coomer get the outsize humor of Donna's two friends, and John Hemphill, Michael Aaron Lindner and Martin Kildare are fine as the three emissaries from Donna's past.

OK, OK, I know, it's not Shakespeare.

But in a way, it is. "Mamma Mia" is certainly not as mindless as it pretends.

As I've said before, I don't understand why it's been knocked for having a sappy book. The book's actually very canny, as it would have to be to incorporate all those pre-existing ABBA songs. But more than that, it has a satisfying, archetypal structure, very much like Shakespearean comedy. I'm thinking mainly of "Midsummer Night's Dream," which also takes place at a time and in a place of attitude-changing, topsy-turvy revelry. But it also has the deeper search for true parentage and lasting relationship at the heart of "All's Well" and "As You Like It."

 Mainly, though, it's just fun. 

At Benedum Center, Downtown. Runs Thurs. 1 and 7:30 p.m.; Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets: $25.50-$66.50; 412-456-6666.

 Post-Gazette theater critic Christopher Rawson can be reached at 412-263-1666 or crawson@post-gazette.com.  

Stage Review: Capitol Steps' 'Electile Dysfunction' rewards healthy irreverence

You might think Pittsburghers have had their fill of battleground state politics the past few months, but not the happy throng that packed the Byham Sunday afternoon for those serenading satirists, Capitol Steps, providing a jam-packed 100 minutes of political humor.

In fact, the vociferous glee with which the audience responded to caricatures of the major players in the presidential race probably does express some exasperation. They've been haranguing us a lot, so it was invigorating to be able to laugh back at them. And of course the seriousness of the underlying issues means we have to let off steam somehow.

Me, I come at this from a slightly different angle. Not of partisanship -- if you can tell from the relative degrees of Sunday's hilarity, I'd say my political preference was in line with a majority of the audience -- but as a long-time teacher of satire at Pitt and a fellow practitioner of the onstage satiric arts.

As native Pittsburgh theatrical guru George S. Kaufman once said, topical satire has a very short shelf life. My own contribution is to produce the annual "Off the Record," which could be described as a Pittsburgh version of Capitol Steps, albeit with a cast of two dozen and a storyline. So for eight years I've seen the Byham bubbling with that same irreverent glee (oddly enough, I was also sitting in my usual seat), and I know just how hard it is to get comedy, caricature, lampoon, spoof and occasionally satire itself to lift off into delight.

These guys are good, starting with the clever title of this edition, "Electile Dysfunction." It did take me longer than much of the audience to get into it, because their revue format -- one discrete number following another briskly -- doesn't have much thematic coherence or cumulative build. A lot of the early stuff seemed pretty predictable. And maybe I had a touch of "show-me" attitude.

But gradually I melted before the skill of the five performers, especially the men (the Sarah Palin wasn't very good, for one -- how can you not do a great Sarah Palin?). The two numbers that really sent me over the edge into helpless laughter were the most tried and true, a clever, gagging-for-air funny adaptation of that dependable old standby, "Who's on First," and a brilliant, tour-de-force essay in Spoonerisms.

If you don't remember, that's the kind of semi-nonsense talk where you transpose elements of adjacent words, usually by switching initial consonants, as in calling McCain "a grittle bit lumpy" or speaking of Palin's "spuzzle on her mouse." Our wonderful language is such that silly transpositions often sound vaguely irreverent or even obscene.

As to the songs, as in "Off the Record" the key to this sort of parodic writing is to find a title or phrase that easily converts. For example, how hard is it to conflate "Barack" and "The Leader of the Pack" into "A Leader Named Barack"?

Once you do that, the rest is easy: "Obamamia" ("Mamma Mia"), "FEMA" ("Fever"), "My 401K" (YMCA), "How You Solve a Problem Like Korea," "Mine every mountain, fill every stream," "The Sunni Side of the Street" and "Keep Us Alive, Keep Us Alive" sung by the four elderly moderates on the Supreme Court.

The Capitol Steps writers have a comforting fondness for Broadway standards. They are generally even-handed in their political jabs, as you'd expect. If the audience felt those in one direction were stronger than in another, well, beauty's not the only thing that resides in the eye of the beholder. In general, those jabs weren't vicious. Jonathan Swift wouldn't call it satire, just lampooning. But such objects of irreverence as Larry Craig ("knock three times on the tile if you want me") might disagree.

I really liked the "American Pie" (that's been outsourced to Shanghai) number, and the downsizing United Airlines sketch certainly brought back Brockett and Barbara doing their immortal Agony Airlines number. I'm sorry not to know which performer was which, but the spoonerism sketch and that charming reprobate Bill Clinton ("wherefore am I Romeo?) took the prize.

Irreverent caricature is a hallowed form of political participation, good for the democratic (small D) soul. Now go vote.