The Money

Mama Mia!

This summer, my family and I went on a vacation to New York. One of the wonderful things that we did was watch a musical called Mama Mia. Other than this, I have never been to a musical in my life. I did not know what to expect or what it was about. I was bummed out that I had to go watch a boring musical with my family. Oh boy was I wrong.

My first thought when I walked in was astonishing. The theater was huge and the stage was so close. As we took our seats, there was some background music that was playing through all the tunes that they were going to play that night. It matched perfectly to our moods of anticipation and wonder. We patiently waited in our seats for the show to begin while listening to the background music. As I was going through the program, I noticed that this musical was based on all the ABBA songs. This seriously disappointed me because it brought back memories of family trips of constant repeats of ABBA on my car stereo as my dad hummed along with the melodies.

The musical started very abruptly and was very startling. The lead guitarist jammed on his guitar as soon as the curtains rolled up, showing no mercy. As the play started, I was amazed of how it felt. It was not like watching a movie on the television because this was an actually live performance, no chances to mess up. The choreography was highly energetic and the lighting matched the routines very superbly. The cast looks as if it is having as much fun as the audience, while inane things keep on occurring in the contrived and cliche plot. In one scene, Sophie has a nightmare to the music of "Under Attack." In the dream sequence, her groom wears a wedding dress, no less. Actually much of the enjoyment of this show comes from seeing where they are going to place each of the 20-odd songs that are listed in the playbill in alphabetical rather than performance order-no one wants the audience to know which tune will come when until seeing the play. The show in fact is making fun of itself as well-who would think of a story taking place on a Greek island with the Italian words Mama Mia!

And for the big dessert, the cast received an encore. The lead players disappeared just long enough to come back in eye-popping, deliciously tacky silver lame costumes to raise the applause to the highest level. Everyone was very vigorous and lively. People were even dancing in the audience! Although this