Mamma Mia was not bad! It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but then I don’t know quite what I was expecting! Most of the audience seemed older than me, which was strange. I thought it was interesting that the Tinitus society were handing out ear plugs as we entered the theatre. And then I discovered that my seat was on the second row back, right in front of a huge speaker stack, and I thought I may need the ear plugs! However, it was much less noisy than the acts I saw at Butlins and I guess that the Queen show (We Will Rock You) which I have booked to see next month, will be louder. In fact, the people next to me popped their ear plugs in almost as soon as the band started playing, but had taken them out within a couple of minutes to hear the dialogue (which was definitely on the quiet side!) They had two huge screens, one either side of the stage, and were projecting the German translation of the words. This meant that I often laughed a second or two ahead of the majority of the audience!
At the end of the day, it was a story with a few Abba songs inserted. Mostly these were relevant and fitted well, but I guess they had to massage the story a bit to fit them in.
When the “play” ended, lots of people scurried off to catch trams and trains, which was a pity, cos they then did a 10-15 minute encore with Abba type costumes and really good renditions of a few favourite songs.
Don’t think I would see it again – I prefer the Abba tribute bands that I have seen.