Mamma Mia!

The mother of all jukebox musicals, Mamma Mia! has been pulling Broadway and West End audiences out of their seats for more than 10 years.

And yet, whilst the film’s director Phyllida Lloyd may be in control of this monstrous success, it bears none of the big screen version's spirit or spectacle.

As French and Saunders described in their spoof, Mamma Mia is “ABBA songs with words in between”. Catherine Johnson’s book is notorious, stretching the Swedish super-group’s greatest hits across a plot of mystery paternities and saccharine sweet romances.

Like Anthony Van Laast’s choreography, the whole thing falls into that theatrically questionable category of “good clean fun”, seldom allowing itself to dwell in style or symbolism that would not be at home in an S Club 7 video.

It stumbles from song to song, leaving little room for dramatic development amidst its laboured dialogue, unashamedly throwing itself into ABBA numbers like a drunken hen at a karaoke. There is little emotional journey in this staged soap and, by the end of act one, all sense of the story’s drama and pathos are lost under the strain of the over-arching girl-power that drives it.

Mark Thompson’s surprisingly post-modern design is pretty in its simplicity, whitewashing the buildings of Donna’s Greek tavern to sit pleasantly against the azure stripes of the seas behind. Howard Harrison’s lighting, too, has the warmth of the summer sun, but the audience have seen most of what the set has to offer within the first ten minutes and, other than a costume change for the wedding and a gratuitous spandex intermission, it is for the most part uninspiring and unchanging.

The cast deserve better. Sara Poyner’s portrayal of the independent yet maternally devoted mama at the centre of the show finds an acute sensitivity in songs such as Slipping Through My Fingers and confidently belts the top note in The Winner Takes It All. As comedy confidantes Rosie and Tanya, Jennie Dale and Kate Graham are charming and Richard Standing’s Sam Carmichael sings like a siren in comparison with Pierce Brosnan.

The Greeks invented pantomime thousands of years ago, and Mamma Mia! does little to move theatre any further forward.