See that girl, watch that scene

Wednesday was dancing queens’ night out. Before heading to National Theater for Mamma Mia!, Thom and I had a lovely dinner at Les Halles downtown. They have a three-course pre-theater menu for only $17.89. Quite a deal. I had the soup of the day (potato leek), a tasty salmon entrée, and for dessert a fruit tart. Yum.

Mamma Mia!, the musical based on the songs of ABBA, is such a fun show. A guilty pleasure. I’d seen it once before—I took my parents to see it in San Francisco a few years ago—but I’d forgotten just how wacky and exuberant it is. We scored front-row seats, giving us, as Thom says, a great view of all the eye candy: guys cavorting in wetsuits or less. (In certain scenes I found it hard to concentrate, distracted by all the packages paraded before me. Ahem.) But yeah, some of the costumes are fabulous (I totally want the Ascot-like spring dresses and hats that the women guests wear in the wedding scene), and the music and dancing is fun (we were on our feet and boogying by the end). For the past few days, I’ve been singing ABBA to myself… and out loud.

“Dancing Queen.” “Take a Chance on Me.” “The Winner Takes It All.” And the list goes on. It’s all there in the show. You’d think stringing together disparate songs (twenty-two of them!) from a single group like this might result in more or less a staged concert, but here for the most part the plot succeeds in holding them together. That’s one of the amusing things about this show: you wonder which instantly recognizable song the story will produce next, and when you hear the strains of each first line, you smile and think, “ah, yes, of course,” prompting me to comment to Thom, “There really is an ABBA song for every occasion!”