Te Aua­ha’s Music­al Theatre cohort for 2023 is bring­ing Mamma Mia! to our shores this Septem­ber, and we are all bet­ter for it. A spell­bind­ing, fab­ulous ver­sion of Cath­er­ine Johnson/ABBA’s juke­box music­al knocked my abso­lute socks off last night, and I’m ser­i­ously con­sid­er­ing going back to see it again.

You might have seen the 2008 movie and its 2018 sequel, and the plot here is mostly the same. 20 year old Soph­ie is get­ting mar­ried on the fic­tion­al Greek island of Kalokairi, and she’s invited her three poten­tial fath­ers to join her and her moth­er, Donna, for the wed­ding. Hijinks occur, the wed­ding falls apart, but through the power of rad tunes from the 1970s, all things come right in the end.

Okay, I’m biased. This is one of my favour­ite music­als, and I’ve seen it on stage before, but Te Aua­ha’s done very, very well here. The entire show zings with an energy that’s rare in even pro­fes­sion­al theatre, and is wholly joy­ful and engross­ing for its dur­a­tion.

Leigh Evans’ strong dir­ect­ori­al hand guides over a show that could be very dis­par­ate without the appro­pri­ate guid­ance, and is much bet­ter for it. I espe­cially like the choice to cross­cast a couple of the char­ac­ters!

Her cho­reo­graphy, espe­cially, is phe­nom­en­al, with a 25+ per­son cast cre­at­ing gor­geous, elab­or­ate stage pic­tures as they dance through dif­fer­ent styles – some pop dance, some waltz­ing, move­ment with rags and beach tow­els. Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’ under­score through-line is retro and deeply catchy, and you will be singing along when you leave.

The per­form­ances in Mamma Mia! are excel­lent, with a level of vocal con­trol that I’m very impressed by from early-20s per­formers. Both Soph­ie (Lily Moore) and Donna (Rachel McSweeney) are deeply charm­ing, car­ry­ing emo­tion­al weight far bey­ond their years and moved me des­per­ately. McSweeney espe­cially has incred­ible vocal strength, best show­cased in The Win­ner Takes It All, where she finds an extremely palp­able grief.

The poten­tial dads, Sam (Isaac Andrews), Bill (River Sant­ner) and Harry (Josh Franken) are all wholly like­able in their own right; driv­en per­formers with their own char­ac­ter motiv­a­tions, who are dis­tinct­ive and delight­ful. Rosie (Aneika Web­ster) and Tan­ya (Abby Roff) hold their own in their hero songs respect­ively; Take a Chance on Me and Does Your Moth­er Know, with both get­ting some of the biggest cheers of the night.

Mamma Mia! has an excel­lent gap-less ensemble, who fill out the back­ground with a pres­ence that is deeply neces­sary and would be missed if they wer­en’t there. I’d also like to make men­tion of the entire pro­duc­tion team, who anchor this ridicu­lous (pos­it­ive) nar­rat­ive well into a world of its own – but espe­cially Michael Trig­g’s light­ing design, which is genu­inely stun­ning and util­ises the Te Aua­ha light­ing rig to its very best.

There are a few little incon­sist­en­cies with­in the per­form­ances, mostly in the realm of accents, but in all fair­ness – accents are insanely chal­len­ging, even out­side of an aca­dem­ic set­ting. Nev­er do these incon­sist­en­cies ruin the enjoy­ment of the over­all show, and in some moments, add to the charm.

Mamma Mia! is a fab­ulously glit­tery night out, and an abso­lute must see.

Show con­tains haze, strobe and sexu­al ref­er­ences.