Review: MAMMA MIA! at Solvang Festival Theater

A musical comedy set to the ebullient music of Swedish pop group, Abba, Mamma Mia! takes audiences on a toe-tapping journey to a wedding on a small island near Greece.

Twenty-year-old Sophie (Molly Dobbs) has invited three men, Harry (Michael Tremblay), Bill Austin (Erik Stein), and Sam (Tim Fullerton) to her immediately impending nuptials. Any one of these men may be Sophie's father. Sophie's mother, Donna (Melinda Parrett), had some tightly-spaced relationships when she became pregnant two decades ago. Donna has mixed feelings about the men who might be her daughter's father. Sophie and Donna come to terms with the past with the help of a chorus of friends who have come for the wedding and who find their own lightly lusty diversions.

For all the leaps of plausibility that musical comedy frequently asks of an audience, Mamma Mia! presents a straightforward enough conflict: Sophie wants to know who her father is and Donna does not want her to know (also Donna does not know who the actual father is). The characters are then set loose in spandex and feather boas to sing and dance through the inevitable collision of these motives. In PCPA's production, the ensemble scenes were particularly effective because of their additional musical texture. Katie Fuchs-Wackowski's choreography plays up the fun of musical numbers like "Lay All Your Love on Me" and classics like "Dancing Queen."

When I saw Mamma Mia!, the audience brimmed with pleasure at the antics of wedding guests, the chorus of snorkelers dancing in their flippers, and the bubbly Swedish pop tracks so many people know. The actors drew on the energy of a packed house (consider getting your ticket ahead of time), which piqued when the putative fathers appeared in their 1970's guises. Tim Fullerton, Michael Tremblay, and Erik Stein donned in wigs and a rainbow of spandex is an image I will not soon forget. PCPA resident artists Kitty Balay as Rosie, Donna's friend from way back, and Erik Stein as potential father Bill, gleefully revelled in their musical comedy roles, unfettered by the constraints of realism. Their "Take a Chance on Me" number charmed and surprised the audience as Rosie (Balay) flipped the traditional roles of male/female seduction.

PCPA's production coincides with the movie release of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, allowing us to hear and see the story of Donna when she first came to the island and met Sophie's three dads. A short satirical video is circulating in which a seriously-minded critic begins to analyze Mamma Mia 2 and then declares that it is "a film which you can either choose to enjoy for the perfectly fine piece of entertainment it is or live out the rest of your existence as a miserable killjoy who slogs through life, recoiling at anything remotely joyful or upbeat in the world." I would agree. And I would grab a ticket and take a chance on Mamma Mia!

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