Here's a new article from a Canadian newspaper.
http://jam.canoe.ca/Theatre/2005/09/04/1201520.html
ABBA-dabba-do
By Colin MacLean -- Edmonton Sun
Milo Shandel spent his teen years in Vancouver listening to punk and new wave music. He remembers his cousin summing up their feelings by wearing the classic T-shirt of the time which read, "Disco Sucks.''
ABBA was just a distant noise that sometimes intruded from the radio.
But a personal brush with ABBA changed his attitude toward the '70s supergroup.
Shandel and his wife had just moved to Toronto 10 years ago and they were spending their first Christmas on their own.
"We were both a little sad,'' he remembers on the phone from Regina where Mamma Mia!, the musical based on the songs of ABBA, had set up last week. "So I bought her ABBA Gold. She had spent her childhood roller skating to ABBA in her basement in her satin shorts. I thought the gift would make her happy. We put it on and listened all Christmas Day and it totally lifted our spirits. They swooped in like Swedish superheroes and saved Christmas.''
I think it's probably safe to say that Mamma Mia! is the most popular musical in the world today. It opened in London in 1999 and immediately charmed reviewers and audiences. It first tested the waters of North America in Toronto and then moved to New York in 2002 where it collected five Tony Award nominations - including one for best musical.
At the moment, there are 11 productions running concurrently around the world. Mamma Mia is the first major production in our newly refurbished Jubilee Auditorium. It begins a 13-day run on Tuesday.
For those who may have had their memory of those years permanently warped by Led Zeppelin and Nazareth, ABBA exploded onto the scene in 1974 when Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad won the Eurovision Song Contest with a tune called Waterloo.
The song topped charts around the world. The next eight years saw a stream of singles, platinum albums and soldout concerts worldwide. The group very publicly came apart in 1982 but their music continues to endure.
A couple of year back they were offered a guaranteed billion dollars (!) for a comeback tour.
They declined.
Mamma Mia! is a "juke box'' musical - that is a work artificially constructed from pop songs. The songs come first - a process completely backward from the usual way of these things.
But English producer Judy Craymer loved ABBA's music and persuaded band members Ulvaeus and Andersson of the possibility of creating a musical using their oeuvre.
"I just saw it as a big experiment,'' Ulvaeus told the New York Daily News in 2001. "The challenge was whether this could actually be done - to have a catalogue of songs and then rummage through it to get something coherent out of it.''
The producers turned to a "serious'' playwright - Catherine Johnson. It took Johnson two years but, borrowing liberally from a 1968 Gina Lollobrigida film, Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell, came up with a story line that would accommodate some 22 of ABBA's greatest hits. The list includes Dancing Queen, Money Money Money, Take a Chance on Me and many more. (Except, for some reason, their big North American hit, Fernando.)
"They have an amazing ability to fit into a dramatic context,'' enthuses Shandel. "Benny and Bjorn were geniuses, not only musically, but lyrically as well. I think because English was their second language they were able to write lyrics that are universal. Even when they were breaking up, they wrote some very heartbreaking lyrics and of course, those songs are in the show. Songs like The Winner Takes it All and Slipping Through My Fingers.
Amazingly, no lyrics to the songs were changed. I took in Mamma Mia! in London a month ago and noted little gasps from the audience at how ingeniously their favourite ABBA tunes fitted into the dramatic context. "Yeah,'' agrees Shandel. "Often they start giggling because they can't believe there's where they put that song.''
Many of the reviews of Mamma Mia! begin the same way, with "I hate disco music'' or "I can't stand the '70s.'' But even the mighty New York Times was melted by this sunny, upbeat vehicle observing, "It may be the unlikeliest hit ever to win over cynical, sentiment-shy New Yorkers.''
Shandel plays one of the three blokes who might be the father of the musical's young heroine. Or not. Apparently 20 years before the musical opens, the three visited the Greek Island where mom hung out and each had a dalliance with the lady. Mom is not quite sure which is the father but her daughter wants one of them to walk her down the aisle for her own imminent marriage.
The Toronto-based actor has been with the show now for three years. "Name any town and city in the States and I'll bet we played there - from the big ones like Chicago, L.A. or Boston right down to Springfield, Illinois, or Raleigh, North Carolina. Audiences can react differently in different cities but no matter where we've played audiences have embraced the show and had a good time.''
Or in the words of ABBA, "My, my how can I resist you?''
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Graeme Dempsey, Vancouver, Canada
