Arts & Culture

What: Mamma Mia!
Where: CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St.
When: Now, until Sun., Nov. 10
Highlight: Christine Sherrill’s take on the trusty showstopper The Winner Takes It All
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: It’s fascinating to watch director Phyllida Lloyd’s crowd-pleasing production work its magic.

TOWARD THE END  of Mamma Mia!’s opening night at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, the 25^th-anniversary touring production hit a small bump: during a two-hander scene, an actor’s body microphone began to pop uncontrollably. With professional efficiency, the other performer marched off stage and grabbed a hand microphone as a replacement. An improvised line (“Where’d you get this?”) acknowledged the change, applause crescendoed and the dialogue continued.

This sequence of problem-solving, presumably part of a pre-discussed contingency plan, highlights the unflappable, machine-like nature of director Phyllida Lloyd’s crowd-pleasing production, decades after its premiere on the West End and two film adaptations. A mixture of volume, energy and speed is the show’s other steroid — while an ABBA jukebox musical set on a Greek island was never going to bore, it certainly doesn’t hurt for the action to charge forward with such hypnotizing force.

Lloyd renders the familiar plot at an 11 from the top. As 20-year-old bride-to-be Sophie (Alisa Melendez) tells her pals about the secret wedding invitations she’s sent off to the three different men who might be her dad, giggles rain down between almost every line. The same goes for early scenes featuring Sophie’s down-to-earth mother Donna (Christine Sherrill) and her pair of fun-loving friends, Rosie (Carly Sakolove) and Tanya (Jalynn Steele). But the arrival of the potential dads — former rock ‘n’ roller Harry (Tony Clements), magazine writer Bill (Jim Newman) and straitlaced Sam (Victor Wallace) — punctures the fun, sending Donna, with whom all of them once had a fling, into hysterics (and the title song).

For the show that launched the jukebox musical fever of the 2000s, an epidemic that’s yet to let up (Moulin Rouge!, another one with an exclamation point in its title, starts performances at Mirvish next month), Mamma Mia!’s treatment of ABBA’s music is surprisingly varied. The numbers are occasionally heightened and surreal, barely pretending to be part of the story (Money, Money, Money). Other times, they’re genuine conduits for plot (Does Your Mother Know), or bizarre portraits of a character’s psyche (Under Attack). And sometimes they’re even seemingly written by the characters, who are themselves apparently undercover pop stars (Super Trouper).

It may be best not to overthink it. The important thing is that the songs clock in at pop-concert volume — so even if the audience member next to you is singing along under their breath, you won’t be able to hear (thank you, sound designer Andrew Bruce). Off-stage choral singing is also a constant, lending extra weight to solos and duets.

The touring cast proves solid, with the female leads taking the spotlight. Melendez is a passionate Sophie, frequently on the verge of tears — a highly emotional approach that meshes with the production’s hyper-energetic mandate. Sherrill, meanwhile, keeps Donna fairly closed off until Act Two when the character releases decades of pent-up frustration in The Winner Takes It All, that trusty showstopper. And though I got out my critic pen as Steele began Does Your Mother Know — structurally, the tune has no reason to be in the show — she brought out enough riffs to provoke mid-song cheers from the crowd, nullifying any complaints. For, indeed: nothing anyone says about Mamma Mia! can change the fact that it’s here to stay.