| How long will the Mamma Mia! bubble last? Recently I had an opportunity to see a touring cast of the musical Rent. I went mainly because I was a little nostalgic for it as I was quite a fan of the show upon seeing it for the first time in 1997. I liked it so much I saw it in its West Coast debut at the La Jolla Playhouse a total of three and a half times before the show finally closed and moved on to Los Angeles. (The half time I saw it was because I snuck in during the intermission on the final night.) Outside of Mamma Mia!, Rent is the only show I’ve seen in professional productions more than one time. However, upon seeing the show seven years later, the show didn’t feel nearly as relevant as it once did. Songs about living and dying in America at the end of the millennium seem so … last century. Sure, some of the topics of the show are still poignant and part of life in 2004, but those issues have lost their newsworthiness. It’s no longer as shocking to see a show consisting of three couples, one a straight couple, one a couple of gay men, and the third a lesbian couple and a seven main character who is not in a coupled relationship but friends with all of them. The straight couple and the gay men couple are dealing with HIV and the lesbian couple spend most of the show arguing with each other at varying levels of intensity. While HIV as a problem hasn’t gone away, the perception now is that living with HIV now is much more controllable than it was seven years ago, and that was still an improvement over an additional seven years earlier where being HIV positive was almost an automatic death sentence. How is Mamma Mia! going to fare as the show continues to run. This year the hit five years in London, and three years on Broadway and audiences still flock to the show. Arguably, depending on whether you ask an ABBA fan who likes or hates the show, some considered it dated before the show even opened. But its appeal to the masses is the unexpected part. Even Björn felt it was just going to be a short run show but its become a mass money making entity on its own and being translated into several languages for productions outside the English speaking world. Perhaps a testament to it’s staying power is that several shows attempting to copy the basic idea of using the songs of a defunct group as a foundation for a theatrical show have been tried and continue to be tried in the wake of Mamma Mia!’s success and more have closed nearly as quickly as they’ve opened than those that have found an audience. Looking back at Björn and Benny’s past musical, Chess, is not even a good gauge to attempt to predict how long Mamma Mia!’s ability to draw audiences will last. While Chess’s run in London is considered a success, but even it’s success is pale by comparison to Mamma Mia! And the Broadway run of Chess was a bomb by all accounts. And despite the fact the show’s cold war metaphor using an American player versus a Russian player is about a world that hasn’t existed in fifteen years. But despite all this, the show has achieved a cult-like status in the theatre community in that the songs from it are very highly regarded even though the show itself has been plagued with problems with it’s plot and no two productions ever seem to be the same. An attempt to create a “definitive” version of the show was done for the Swedish premiere of the musical, but it still remains to be seen how that will work in an English language production when the songs themselves are so well known that any variations made via the translation into Swedish to adjust the plot may not be welcomed by English speaking audiences. “I Know Him So Well” in English is usually a beautiful duet, but the Swedish version sounds more like two snakes spitting venom at each other, while understandable in light of the fact it’s a song between a man’s mistress and his wife, but the existing English lyrics don’t seem like they would work as well in a vocal duel instead of a duet. And is it really worth the effort when eventually fewer and fewer audiences will consist of people who lived during the cold war and those who only know of it from what they read in history books? Let’s face it; the moment the Berlin Wall came down, Chess became a period piece. Speaking of period pieces, the upcoming English version of Kristina Från Duvemåla is something I’m looking forward to, but I do have to wonder how well audiences will warm to it. It’s a period piece set before the twentieth century. I do think theatrical audiences will be able to appreciate its brilliance and importance in giving a voice to a period of Swedish and American history, but will the general public appreciate it? To them it may just be another period piece like Les Miserables, with ornate antique costumes and sets and eventually audiences grow tired of shows like that. Only time will tell. It seems that the relatively simple shows like Grease and the Andrew Lloyd Webber shows that only have one decent song at the most, seem to go on and on and on forever. Since Mamma Mia!’s plot is very simplistic and even it’s staging, somehow I don’t think Mamma Mia!’s engine is going to run out of steam anytime soon. But one of the things I can appreciate about Mamma Mia! that I can’t about Rent, is that I can go home from the show and hear the songs sung by a world class group - that little Swedish quartet called ABBA, perhaps you’ve heard of them?! Rent’s Original Broadway Cast album leaves a lot to be desired in terms of cast members with any ability to sing (which is also the case for the Original London cast album for Mamma Mia!), who knows, maybe it’s a pipe dream, but I would certainly love a chance to hear Agnetha and/or Frida try out a couple of songs from Rent, perhaps they could start with interpretations of “Out Tonight” or “Seasons of Love” Ryan Cameron |
