Juliette M. Ojeda and the cast of Mamma Mia!Joan Marcus/Supplied
- Title: Mamma Mia!
- Music and lyrics by: Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and some songs with Stig Anderson
- Book by: Catherine Johnson
- Director: Phyllida Lloyd
- Actors: Juliette M. Ojeda, Jessica Crouch, Jalynn Steele, Carly Sakolove, Rob Marnell, Leland Burnett, Victor Wallace
- Company: Mirvish Productions
- Venue: Princess of Wales Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs until Aug. 30
I really like East Side Mario’s.
Don’t get me wrong: I know the pizza is bad, the waterlogged Caesar salad even worse. I know that the free bread is more often than not an act of digestive sabotage, and that I have never, not once, left an East Side Mario’s feeling better about myself than I did when I got there.
Yet still, I like spending time there. I like the sangria filled with oversweet popping juice pearls. I like the pastas so large that I can split them into not one, but two mediocre meals. I like knowing that wherever I go in Ontario’s suburbs, an East Side Mario’s will be waiting for me, inevitable in its crowd-pleasing inoffensiveness.
I feel similarly about Mamma Mia.
The touring production of Mamma Mia now playing at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto isn’t great. Mark Thompson’s set, a small collection of pseudo-Greek walls and staircases, feels cheap and unimaginative; Howard Harrison’s lighting embraces a bizarre palette of neon greens and reds that has little to do with the action on stage. The acting is uneven; the sound levels frequently muffle dialogue and lyrics into near-obscurity.
Jalynn Steele, Carly Sakolove, and Jessica Crouch in Mamma Mia!Joan Marcus/Supplied
But it’s Mamma Mia, the ninth-longest-running show on Broadway and one of the most popular pieces of musical theatre of all time. Despite quibbles – and there are many, many quibbles – Mamma Mia remains a fixed point in the universe, intoxicating in its offer of a fluffier-than-fluffy story and a score set to the music of ABBA. Hard-hitting theatre? Hardly. But especially since the recent closure of the all-Canadian production of & Juliet, I’d argue that Mamma Mia is where you’ll have the most fun in a Toronto theatre this month.
Story-wise, we’re on a fictional island in Greece, where 20-year-old Sophie (Juliette M. Ojeda, shaky at first but winsome by intermission on opening night) is about to get married. Raised all her life by single mom Donna (Jessica Crouch), Sophie has a secret: She’s read her mother’s old diaries, and has narrowed her biological father down to three possible men, all of whom have been invited to the wedding.
Of course, when Bill (Leland Burnett), Harry (Rob Marnell) and Sam (Victor Wallace) show up, Donna’s horrified – why are three of her ex-flings at her taverna? On the eve of her too-young daughter’s wedding, no less?
Chaos obviously ensues as Donna and her friends Tanya and Rosie (Jalynn Steele and Carly Sakolove, both outstanding) try to dispel any remaining wedding jitters – and come to terms with the summer that resulted in Sophie’s conception.
The story couldn’t be squishier – the cop-out ending aside (sorry!), Mamma Mia relies on its characters feeling an extraordinarily narrow gamut of emotions in order for its plot to make sense. Before the wedding, Sophie says some truly heinous things to Donna about how she was raised – there’s barely even an apology to gloss over their fight before they’re back to harmonizing. Donna’s decision to marry a surprise suitor, too, feels overly mushy: Hasn’t she just spent the whole show telling us she doesn’t need a man? Even weirder: Why don’t we see Sophie and her fiancé reconcile after he threatens to cancel the wedding?
But again: It’s Mamma Mia. Who cares?
Anthony Van Laast’s rather literal choreography might be the star of the show – fans of Mamma Mia’s near-perfect 2008 film adaptation might recognize a certain scuba-fin dance sequence in Lay All Your Love On Me. A few performances, too, are exemplary: Ojeda, though trembly in her first few numbers on Wednesday, later demonstrated a tremendous degree of warmth in her voice in Thank You for the Music and the songs of the second act. Steele and Sakolove, too, are scene-stealers as Donna’s posse – Steele, in particular, taps into the show’s sense of humour and ekes out all the laughs she can from her one-liners.
As Donna, Crouch captures the working mom’s gentle nature and wild past, but vocally struggles in some of the bigger numbers: The Winner Takes It All sees the actor squeeze her voice into a tight belt that occasionally threatens to crack wide open. The three dads, meanwhile, do what they can with the material, but Mamma Mia does no favours to the men on its stage: Why does each dad need a song in the second act? And why does it take them so long to figure out the scheme taking place?
The rest of the production, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, provokes as many questions as its nonsensical premise: In Thompson’s set, why does the moon quadruple in size between scenes? And why are there two perfectly circular cutouts in the tree silhouette that so awkwardly hangs over the rotating walls?
Indeed, it is useless to ask these questions, in the same way it would be useless to ask why East Side Mario’s garlic toast tastes like spray foam insulation. But, like East Side Mario’s, Mamma Mia feels inevitable, a comforting, undemanding certainty in the theatrical canon. Is Mamma Mia good? No, not particularly, and the corner-cutting on the touring production doesn’t help matters. But just like my guilty pleasure dinner spot of choice, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it – and that I’m not considering buying a ticket for an encore.