Archive for July, 2009

Aimless meandering around the booking sites like BookMyShow.com surely helps once in a while. Last Wednesday I came across this advert for a live musical being organised in an auditorium near my home in Hyderabad (India) – Mamma Mia, based on the hit – world’s most successful musical by same name.

The show was performed by newly floated Hot Shoe Entertainment Company, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the legendary Greek fable-based musical Mamma Mia. The show is a veritable treat for Abba fans who slip into nostalgia, courtesy pop favorites like Waterloo, Dancing Queen, Money money money and a whole range of ABBA hits. The energy and enthusiasm with which the crew performed, showed they haven’t taken audience gratis a bit. You could see the enjoyment on the faces of crew members as they danced away the play and showered the euphoria, being part of it. The very face of the lead lady here (on the right) who played Sophie, the bride, says it all! Am impressed beyond limits young lady, hats off to your enjoyment of the career, for many lesser and higher mortals miss it. The way she could dance, act and sing at same time, reminded me of a friend from Nagpur who has similar skills.

And to make sure the energy gets siphoned in the audience too, crew invited audience too to be the part of the all time famous Mamma Mia song, which saw about 50 people taking stage and stairs to join the troupe in singing and dancing on the song. As Jeffrey Vardon, co-producer and choreographer, put it this evening – “Mamma Mia has history of running house full and still having 50% of seats vacant as public could not keep their feet from dancing along!“

For those who do not know about ABBA, they were the legendary group of Pop culture of 70s. Mamma Mia just collected their songs and threaded a musical play around it, tweaking the songs a bit. Over here the troupe has made sure the dresses and play’s flow matches the actual movie. The songs, which are sung live by the way, captured that charisma of ABBA. The lady who plays Donna (mother) also happens to be single mother in real life. I must admit I was lucky that I had not seen the original so could take a fresh look at the performance, rather than compare it all the while.

After the play ended on lines of original musical, the two producers came on stage to give a damn neat performance dripping with elegance and panache. The control that beautiful Varalaxmi Sarathkumar showed here, stamped her élan over the final sequence. (see below)

Another thing that happened was that I could not convince any friend of mine to shell Rs.770 for a musical play, so I was left all alone over there (with other families, essentially two fat ladies  in post 50s to accompany me on either side!) to savor the performance. And do I regret it? No way! Maybe one of the best Sundays I have spent in Hyderabad!

Psst.. next performance of the crew is in Banglore, then Mumbai before they leave for Dubai and Colombo.