Review Mama Mia

This past Sunday, I attended the school musical, Mama Mia, at 2:30 in the Black Box Theater in the field house. The main characters in this musical were Sophie, Donna, Sam, Sky, Bill, Harry, Rosie, and Tanya. Donna, who was Sophie's mom, had sexual intercourse with three men, Harry, Sam, and Bill. Sophie is now 20 years old and she is getting ready to get married to Sky, however, she wants to find an enclosure on who her real father is. Sophie then invites all three of the men to the wedding without Donna knowing. When Donna finds out that the men are here she freaks out. The main plot of the musical was that Sophie got caught up in her own lie when she accepted Bill, Harry, and Sam's proposal to walk her down the aisle as her "father". Sophie was so worked up with all of this nonsense that she started to not care about who her father was anymore. She then had her mom walk her down the aisle, which followed with Sophie calling the wedding off because of how young Sky and herself was. They had their whole life ahead of them. When Sky and Sophie agreed to canceling their wedding, Sam confessed that he was still in love with Donna and then proposed to her. She said yes, and they made the weeding their own. I feel that the plot was important to the musical because Sophie was so dedicated to figure out who her father was, that she forgot why she wanted to have the wedding in the first place. Sophie coming to the conclusion that she wouldn't get worked up over who her father was, showed that she was ready to be more mature and take a big step deeper into her life. The plot was also important because it shaped up the most interesting part of the musical. 

The major themes of the play are love and honesty. I feel that love played such a large role in the musical because Sophie loved both her fiancee and father(s). She loved them so much, however, she had to be honest with herself and make the descion to follow through with her soulmate, or find enclosure with her father(s). When Sky and Sophie had the arguemnet about if they were still in love and for her to revealuate her choices, it played a big factor in Sophie's overall descion on what she picked to do. She had to come to and honest conclusion on what would make her happier in the future. 

Personally I feel that Audra had the best performance as Sophie. The character she was playing as, Sophie, was a very intelligent girl that knew how to piece things together, however, when it came to love, she was blinded and didn’t know what she wanted to do. Audra performed like a top tier actress. Her tone and pace in her voice sounded so natural, that it sounded like she was casually having a conversation. I also felt that she did the best job with using facial expressions, on and off the spotlight, to emphasize what she was saying. For example, when she accepted her fathers’ proposal, she would put a lot of emotion and facial expressions with her lines. You could see how much it meant to her to finally get a step closer to finding out who her father was. Because of these reasons, I felt that Audra successfully performed as Sophie.

One moment that I really enjoyed was when Donna was singing her solo song in the first half of the play. When she pulled out the money gun and started shooting out 100 dollar bills, I found that very impressive by the directors because the way they were able to incorporate comedy with drama. It was a great way to show the high schooler lifestyle while still executing the scene correctly. This scene also had the audience at its peak of interest, which shows how well executed it was. 

I enjoyed the play a lot because of the humor that the directors were able to put in with the drama, without making the scene seem like a joke. From my perspective, the audience also enjoyed the play based off of the amount of laughter and applause that occurred throughout the play. From watching this play, I learned how important it is to not lose character in the show. Even if it’s a small part don’t slack because someone is always watching. There were a couple points in the play when I caught myself and others paying more attention to the side characters than the main characters. The actors and actresses definitely executed that well also. When I was looking, there wasn’t one time that any of the characters were out of their role.