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SOS! It’s half term and you have children to entertain. Well fear you not – the timeless ABBA musical ‘MAMMA MIA!’ is always there to entertain you. Here’s how.
The songs
Probably the most important one, this. The songs of ABBA are bloody incredible, some of the best pop ever made. Maybe your kids aren’t fans yet. But they will be powerless to resist. ABBA’s greatest hits make the ‘Frozen’ soundtrack sound like a Steve Reich gig. Even the names – ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, ‘Waterloo’, ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Super Trouper’ – should be enough to trigger some sort of excitable cultural memory in your kids’ DNA. Pop doesn’t get better than this.
The stage
Maybe you’ve swooned over the younger Pierce Brosnan in the film version a thousand times already. But ‘MAMMA MIA!’ isn’t really ‘MAMMA MIA!’ unless you’re on your feet, singing along with the thousand other people in the audience. You’d feel a bit silly doing it at home – here it makes total sense.
The sun
The very, very, very best you can hope for from the British weather in February half-term week is ‘tepid’. But forget that – and your failure to have whisked your family away to the winter sunshine – in the feel-good, sunshine-kissed Greek island setting of ‘MAMMA MIA!’ it is forever the summer holidays.
The shows
To mark half-term, the show Is having a bonanza three-matinee-week – including one on the 14th, so you can enjoy a fun day out in the West End with the kids before hopefully doing something more romantic in the evening.
The success
Fussy kids? Running since 1999, with a $600m-grossing film spin-off and based on the music of one of the most successful pop groups of all time, ‘MAMMA MIA’ is nothing if not a proven success. The story is mostly a bit of dexterous escapism – a bunch of song titles craftily woven together into an enjoyably light-hearted story about a paternity mystery. Supercharged by those tunes it’s been delighting families for 18 years and will doubtless be delighting them for many more.
