- “Mamma Mia!”
- Music Hall – Kansas City, Mo
- March 5, 2024
Borrowing a phrase from the classic Alka Seltzer commercial, “MAMMA MIA! That’s a spicy musical!”
What a totally enjoyable presentation for the 25th Anniversary Tour celebration of the London premier in 1999. The jukebox musical pulls you in from the opening notes and flows through the hits of ABBA one after another, and you know them all…of course you do, or you probably wouldn’t bother being in the audience.
The show presents the story of Sophie (Alisa Melendez) a young woman who has been raised by her single mother Donna (Christine Sherrill) on a Greek Island and who is planning her upcoming wedding. Sophie has a dilemma; she doesn’t know who her father is, and to make matters worse, neither does her mother!
Donna is an aging “wild child” of the 70’s who, along with her two besties, Tanya (Jalynn Steele) and Rosie (Carly Sakolove) were once Donna and the Dynamos. However Donna, after finding herself pregnant, has lived a quiet, reclusive life running a café’. Sophia sneaks into her mother’s diary and discovers entries that may point to who the father could be…. Harry, Bill or Sam, all of which Donna had “intimate moments” with 20 years ago. Sophie sends them invitations to her wedding without telling her mother…and as the guests begin to arrive for the wedding, all three men appear, and Sophie starts to deduce which one is her father. Hilarity ensues. All is well in the end and everyone finds what they were searching for. The acting woven throughout the musical numbers is done well, show stealers for me were the Dynamo Girls, and Bill from the “dads”.
Musical highlights: Dancing Queen, The Name of the Game, SOS, and of course Mama Mia. But the curtain call encore is a rousing party montage of Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen, and Waterloo, with full ABBA style costuming, choreography and invitation for participation, and the audience at this performance sure did.
On a scale of zero to five I give “Mamma Mia!” ★★★★1/2
“Mamma Mia!” continues at the Music Hall in Kansas City through March 10th. For tickets to this and upcoming shows on the tour please click HERE.
