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A few years back I was making regular trips to London for business.
(Ah, those were the days.) And I took full advantage of the city,
especially the options for live theater. (As opposed to the dead
kind.) On one trip I discovered this wonderful musical called
Return to the Forbidden Planet. Like the movie, it was based
on The Tempest. And like the movie, it used 50s sci-fi
trappings for its story. But it played its premise for laughs. And
it used pop songs from the 50s and 60s for its score.
Quite a novel idea, I thought, to build a musical around existing
music. I wasn't aware then that it wasn't really all that novel, that
Singin' In The Rain and White Christmas had done it
decades earlier. But I still
thought it was a fun idea in RttFP. And I think it's just as
much fun in Mamma Mia!, which recycles all those ABBA songs
and somehow makes them fit jigsaw puzzle-like into a paper thin plot
about a wedding and three possible candidates for father of the bride.
Great art it's not. Then again, you're reading the words of somebody
who's seen Dame Edna on stage three times. Voluntarily!
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