Tattle Tales

A Triple Threat Show: It’s the first show to open on Broadway since the September 11 disaster, the first Broadway musical of the theater season and the first to receive unanimous critical raves after bowing on the main stem. I refer, or course, to the London musical hit, "Mama Mia," based on the songs of the Swedish rock group ABBA, which opened to such encomiums as: "A pop-solid sensation! Let the joy sweep over you! ABBA-Dabba-Do!" according to the New York Post’s Clive Barnes, "A giant singing cupcake, the unlikeliest hit to win over cynical New Yorkers," from the New York Times’ Ben Brantley and "Syncopated Bliss. With 22 mood-altering ABBA songs that work happy magic," per Variety’s Charles Isherwood. And those are just for starters, with a dozen more rave quotes filling a full page of this past Sunday’s Times.

The musical’s book by Catherine Johnson, and lilting songs with music and lyrics by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus based on the ABBA selections, are among the prime reasons for the smashing success of "Mama Mia." The show’s pounding rock beat for two hours is its only flaw for one like yours truly, whose predilection is for operettas by Jerome Kern and Rudolph Friml and musical revivals with scores by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart. Still, it must be admitted, many of those in the audience at the Winter Garden Theatre, keeping time to the rock beat with clapping hands, were avuncular greybeards. No denying, this is a show for young and old alike.

If the show’s story by the aforesaid Catherine Johnson seems familiar, that could be because of its similarity to the 1968 Sophia Loren movie, "Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell." Another antecedent seems to be the later Broadway musical, "Carmelina," by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane.

In all three stories, a single mother of an 18-year-old daughter attributes her nubile offspring’s paternity to three possible fathers. All three, of course, are blissfully unaware of their possible fatherhood. The action takes place on a tiny Greek island where the heroine, Donna (Louise Pitre) operates the Logan Taverna. The plot gets interesting when daughter Sophie (Tina Maddigan), about to get married, reads her mother’s diary and decides to invite the three old flames to her wedding in the hope the one who spawned her will come forward to give her away.

To find out what happens, you’ll have to buy tickets, which won’t be too easy as "Mama Mia" is as big a hit as the $100-a-ticket, "The Producers." Scalpers, of course, will always hit you for more. But it’s only money, and this is a great show.¶