“Mamma Mia!” transported the audience back in time at John R. Emens Auditorium.
On Thursday night, the three lead women of the show sported shiny bell-bottoms and matching tops. Just seconds later, the three main men of the show came out matching their counterparts.
“Our kids grew up with ABBA at the top of their lungs and the top of their record players,” Ellen Fritz, a retired home birthing midwife, said.
Her husband Bob, a former Ball State assistant professor of Spanish, said he was familiar with all the ABBA songs, like much of the audience.
“The concept of taking all those songs and making them fit together into a story was pretty clever,” he said. “In movies, you have all kinds of devices you can use that you can’t do on stage.”
He said the stage settings for the traveling show reminded him a lot of the movie.
“But nothing beats a live performance,” she said.
For the first half of the show, the performances seemed less energetic for the crowd.
“I’ve gone to a lot of musicals and this choreography is not as great as others I’ve gone to,” said Alyssa Villablanca, a senior information systems and operations management and economy major. “But it’s OK. I love ABBA and I know all the music.”
By the second half, the cast was dancing around on stage and the audience joined along in their seats. Villablanca said the second half was much better.
During the cast’s performance of “Dancing Queen,” the audience waved their hands in the air along with the chorus on stage. Other performances, like “Lay All Your Love On Me,” also received much laughter due to the song’s humor.
Performers danced across stage in scuba diving gear while singing, which interrupted a more serious and intimate scene of the show.
The cast of “Mamma Mia!” erupted into an encore of ABBA’s “Waterloo.”
With a band in the pit performing live, the audience was dancing by the final three performances.
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