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.