Fraters Libertas

Mama, Me Not

After enjoying the fine company (but not the ungodly bar and food bill I rang up) of several local bloggers, including the proprietor of centerfeud.com, Doug from Bogusgold, a chat with Lileks about perfumed body sprays and Sisyphus from the Nihilist In Golf Pants (I'll ignore the fact that Scott Johnson referred to me as "Jamie" at one point) the Doubtlessette and I headed downtown to take in Mama Mia at the Orpheum theatre.

I had high hopes for this performance. I have no idea why. But I guess I thought, I like Abba and you know, people are like, saying good stuff about it, so it must be good. Which is another way of saying I didn't think at all.

Within 10 minutes I knew I was in for a long evening. This was supposed to be a comedy, but there was nary a laugh to be found. The humor was of the Sex-in- the-City-Bridget-Jones-Diary vein of obvious clichés and ridiculous double entendres. I would guess that one out of two bits was a fellatio joke, including one where a cast member was trying to inflate an air mattress. After several unsuccessful attempts, one of the other cast members quips "You're supposed to blow, not suck."

Hilarious.

Which is not to say that people weren't laughing, because they were, although they tended to be mainly female attendees--the kind of people who think Sex in the City is witty and cutting edge and Bridget Jones' Diary is clever. I also think that a kind of Groupthink takes over people in a situation like this where it's Saturday night, they've spent a lot of money on tickets, they're dressed up, they've heard good things from their friends and they are predisposed to liking what they came to see. Regardless.

But what of the singing? It was average at best, grating at worst. Simon Crowell of American Idol has often said that there is a big difference in the singing style of Broadway and pop singers and that if you are trained in the former you will not be successful in the latter. I now know exactly what he means. Broadway singers want to extract every dramatic ounce out of a song at the expense of the melody and with Abba it's all about the melodies.

The show also seemed confused about whether or not the entire thing was supposed to be ironic or not. Several songs were sung poorly on purpose (at least I think they were, it was hard to tell) apparently for comedic reasons which were not entertaining in the least.

I also recognized another social phenomenon particular to performances in hip, urban areas. It is the Knowing Laugh, the laugh that announces to the rest of the audience that I Get It, which usually has no relationship whatsoever to whether or not something is actually funny. It is commonly found in places like the Uptown Theatre, where Saint Paul and I have suffered through several very un-funny movies surrounded by people who read the positive review in the City Pages and were ready to let everyone know how they too got it.

One of many such examples in Mama Mia was this clunker of an exchange between a middle-aged woman and a horny, younger man after he has come on to her:

Woman: Why I'm old enough to be your mother!
Man: Then call me Oedipus!

Oh wait, I get it, Oedipus because he like wanted to have sex with his mother! Yes! I went to college! I'm smart! I listen to NPR! I GET IT!