I Have a Dream – Mamma Mia!

I decided to take my birthday off work, and what better way to spend the day than to take in a matinee of Mamma Mia? Since Karen was free that afternoon, she decided to come with me as well!

Quite a lot of the cast had changed since the last time I’d seen the show in Toronto 3 months earlier. We had a new Sophie, Marisa McIntyre, who did not have a good day at all, unfortunately. I’ve seen her since, and she’s much improved, but this particular performance was pretty bad. There was also a new Rosie, Martha Reilly, who has a very different take on the character than DeAnn did, but it really works this way as well, and she especially has some great interactions with Tamara Bernier’s Tanya. The only part that doesn’t work as well was that I believed DeAnn was a ardent believer in women’s lib and all that, very self-sufficient, anti-marriage, while Martha looks too much like someone’s mother. 🙂 But that’s being very picky – she’s really good.

And then we had David Mucci as Sam. I’d seen him before in Ragtime in New York, so I already knew he was a good actor. He does some lines differently than David Keeley did, and gets some laughs in different places. Overall, he’s really good. The only change I don’t like is that he has a softer entrance into “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, with an underscoring of music, so you know the song’s coming. I liked the way David Keeley just kind of came at it out of nowhere. But that could have been a directorial decision rather than something the actor decided to do.

Anyway, I had tons of fun (surprise!), and it made for a great birthday present to myself. 🙂