I admit it: I don’t always get it right, especially when it comes to judging the commercial prospects of something. After I saw Les Miserables at the Barbican when it first premiered there in 1985, I thought Cameron Mackintosh would be a fool to transfer it to the West End; but he did, and there it still is, the longest-running musical in history. And when I first saw the movie version of Mamma Mia! at a screening back in June, I wrote here that “maintaining the joy, spontaneity and surprises of the stage version of Mamma Mia! proves more difficult onscreen”.
Yet that same movie has, according to a feature in The Guardian last week, “taken £369m worldwide at the box office to date, becoming the most successful musical film in history, trouncing West Side Story, Cabaret and Grease. When released on DVD on Monday, it quickly became the fastest-selling film in British history, shifting 1,669,084 copies on its first day. It now only needs to inch past Titanic to become the highest-grossing film ever in Britain - it is already the highest-grossing British film of all time at the UK box office, beating the Harry Potter films hands down.”
As Kira Cochrane writes in the same piece, “It is, of course, possible to disagree with some of the ingredients that make up the hit film *Mamma Mia! *The fact that much of the acting is creakier than a barn door. That when straining for the high notes, the male lead, Pierce Brosnan, sounds like a bullfrog in a blender. That the mooning young lovers are not for the lactose intolerant, being cheesier than a night spent in a fondue factory. But these would be passing quibbles. Because what you can’t possibly disagree with is the fun of the film - it has been described as the ultimate feelgood movie - and the truly phenomenal figures…”
And the film, which has become “an all-singing, all-dancing juggernaut”, has done so by appealing, she says, “to that much-neglected female audience who, in the words of the film’s producer, Judy Craymer, are ‘north-of-middle-age’. With its warmth, sauce and humour, the story of Donna Sheridan - a middle-aged mother living on a Greek island ambushed at her daughter’s wedding by the three men who could potentially be the girl’s father - has brought women flooding through cinema doors.”
The mum of a friend of mine, who rarely goes to the cinema, told me recently that she’d already been three times! So once again, the evidence happily contradicts my own opinions of the film, or that of Rob Mackie, who in a recent review of the DVD release of the film in The Guardian, declared, “Best approached as a sort of all-star karaoke session, Mamma Mia! would be an embarrassment but for Meryl Streep, who goes so far above and beyond the call of duty as to make it fun at times. Streep is a good singer, as viewers of A Prairie Home Companion will already know, and she dances with gusto in her dungarees. Where her co-stars mostly look embarrassed, she triumphs and gives the film one character you can almost believe in. That’s about all you can say for the film, though. Not only is the story Abbaminable, it’s not even original, being filched from a so-so old film called Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell.”
But it’s the public who decides, not critics, what they want to see, and that’s as it should be: how else, as I’ve asked here before, to account for the ongoing success of We Will Rock You? And that’s as it should be: the public always votes with its feet.
And it can take a while for them to catch on: just last week I was noticing that even Shrek, now previewing on Broadway, had only registered attendance of just 53.9% for the week that ended November 23, proving - I said here - “that a very popular title isn’t enough in the current marketplace: people need to know that the show is actually delivering before they will book for it, and the word is not out yet either way.”
But Thanksgiving week - which always provides a welcome bump to Broadway’s fortunes - has already turned that around. According to a release from the show’s press agents issued yesterday, the show joined “the million dollar club” for the week that ended yesterday, taking some $1,052,975 and setting a house record for a single performance at the Broadway Theare, taking $184,320 at the Saturday matinee on November 29.
Not to put a damper on things but if a show called Shrek , playing in a theatre that is on the route of the Thanksgiving Day Parade doesn't sell out on the single biggest grossing week of the Broadway Season during the single biggest week of the tourist season in New York then they should close up shop immediately, For God's sake even "Henry Sweet Henry" sold out Thanksgiving weekend.