Mamma Mia

The English swear their food is healthy, the French insist that Jerry Lewis is a comic genius, and there are even people who think curling is a gripping sport. Truly, there is no accounting for taste, and what you like is going to govern what you get out of Mamma Mia! If you're an Abbaholic, you'll be in heaven at the Forrest Theater with the prospect of the Swedish group's signature numbers shoehorned into a single show and delivered at a decibel level that can be heard in Trenton.

Mamma Mia! has become such a franchise musical that by now everyone recognizes its trademark image: the laughing, raven-haired girl in a bridal gown who adorns all the play's ads, posters - even the cover of the cast-recording CD. She looks like a radiant Julianna Margulies. But the countless road productions of this songfest should carry a disclaimer: Your actual Mamma Mia! bride may bear no resemblance to the show's icon. That's the case with the show that just reopened at the Forrest Theatre.

She will, of course, deny it. But I'll bet I know what Catherine Johnson, the relatively obscure English author of such plays as Renegades and Dead Sheep, had to say when someone proposed she write a musical around the collected works of the Swedish pop group ABBA. I'll bet she said, "That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. " And thank God she did. For what she proceeded to do, in an act of inspired audacity, was create a show that is not only supremely silly but that makes silliness its subject, an evening-long joke that doesn't just exploit its dumbness but acknowledges it, encouraging the audience to play along.

You may find that the movie version of "Mamma Mia!" brings out your inner Simon Cowell. It's likely to happen any time Pierce Brosnan gets his mitts on a melody. "You no longer have a license to kill, Mr. Brosnan, and someone should revoke your license to sing. " Hiss if you must, but be warned: Brosnan will kill you, and not very softly, with his songs in "Mamma Mia," the film version of the wildly popular stage show constructed around all of ABBA's hits from the Seventies, plus several songs that did not become hits, for reasons that become fathomable as you watch.

You do not comprehend Mamma Mia! as much as surrender to it. This is an improbable, nigh on to impossible, concept for a musical. Even the name's absurd. Mamma Mia!, opening Valentine's Day at the Forrest Theatre, is not set in Italy but on a Greek island, where not one inhabitant appears to be Greek. The sitcom-worthy plot is about a rebellious mother, a traditional daughter, and the three men who could be her father. The 22 songs, in English but not necessarily lucid, were recorded a quarter-century ago by Abba, the Swedish pop quartet once ranked as that nation's second-wealthiest corporation, after Volvo.

Let's just be frank here - Mamma Mia! is about as critic-proof a musical as you'll ever find. Some people just love ABBA, and others love any creative endeavor to which the prefix "chick" can be applied. When you combine the two, you get $2 billion in box office gross, the Hollywood treatment with Meryl Streep (though the musical already was loosely based on the 1968 film Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell), and a palpable girls-night-out bump in the local restaurant economy. So who cares that I never liked ABBA, even when I was little and supposed to love their bouncy, sunny Nordic tracks, and that romantic comedies automatically trigger my gag reflex?

Good Vibrations makes a compelling case for the argument that the next person who thinks it would be nice to cobble together a musical from the Beach Boys' beloved songbook should be run over by a little deuce coupe. Beyond the help of Rhonda (or anyone else), this latest stab at a jukebox musical clearly takes that cash cow Mamma Mia! as its template. But there is a crucial difference. Mamma Mia! is a fatuous and inane show that uses the songs of Abba, which are themselves mostly fatuous and inane.

If music be The Look of Love, spare me excess of it. A show entirely composed of 29 numbers drawn from the prolific songbook of Burt Bacharach and Hal David is demonstrably not what the world needs now. The production attempts to capitalize on both '60s nostalgia and the current boom in wresting musicals from the work of singers and composers long-since banished to Golden Oldies radio. Creators of these hope for the same cash-cow success as Mamma Mia!, which has returned to the Forrest Theatre to prove conclusively that, unlike love, it isn't any better the second time around.

There's a moment in the criminally mistitled Beach Boys musical Good Vibrations when the little deuce coupe finally appears. The car rises briefly from the floor of the stage and is never seen again. Anyone who has sat through the current vogue of musicals trafficking in the legacies of pop icons would surely wish that the shows followed the legendary car into instant oblivion. These vehicles for conveying music cherished by millions are Edsels. The curious subgenre has flourished recently under the collective name of songbook or jukebox musicals.

Only a half decade ago it was, yet it seems like a cultural eon. A young star, fresh from the produce section, could still venture out at night without fear of being pecked to pieces like Tippi Hedren in "The Birds. " - James Wolcott, writing in Vanity Fair in 2008 For an actress in a 24/7 Mean Girls media culture, with vultures beaking at her weight, wardrobe, and arm candy, Amanda Seyfried keeps her private life private and her priorities straight. "I know what and who I feel most connected to," says the spirited star of HBO's Big Love and the new film Dear John.

Only a half decade ago it was, yet it seems like a cultural eon. A young star, fresh from the produce section, could still venture out at night without fear of being pecked to pieces like Tippi Hedren in "The Birds. " - James Wolcott, writing in Vanity Fair in 2008 For an actress in a 24/7 Mean Girls media culture, with vultures beaking at her weight, wardrobe, and arm candy, Amanda Seyfried keeps her private life private and her priorities straight. "I know what and who I feel most connected to," says the spirited star of HBO's Big Love and the new film Dear John.

UNCOVERING THE facts behind Brad and Angelina's split/non-split has been a daunting task. Every anonymous source - always the most trustworthy - says something different. _ They're done. _ They're together. _ They've split up their assets. _ She's getting the children. _ He bought an L.A. mansion with a cave. _ It's all Jen's fault. _ Maddox and Suri Cruise's secret affair has broken them apart. Who can keep track? Thankfully, Life & Style has uncovered, in its own words, "the truth.

YOU CAN put Tattle face-up on the dining room table today. There are no Tiger Woods stories. Our favorite Allentown actress, Amanda Seyfried ("Mamma Mia" and the upcoming "Dear John" and "Chloe"), will be leaving the HBO series "Big Love" to become a full-time movie star. "She's been exploring her movie career for a couple of years now, and we've been giving her a lot of room to do that," "Big Love" creator Will Scheffer told TV Guide. "I know having a commitment to a show for six months definitely cuts into her ability to pursue that career.

What's left to say? Unless you've been hermiting on Mars, chances are you've seen Mamma Mia! on stage, or heard the score, or seen the movie. Or all of the above. Multiple times. The cheesy touring production at the Academy of Music was my third MM, not counting the delish movie. As my date for the evening said, when he heard my teeth grinding: "It is what it is. " He's deep, this guy. The plot revolves around Sophie - played on opening night by understudy Stephanie Barnum - a young woman who lives on a Greek island with her mother, Donna (Michelle Dawson, who seems to be the only cast member who can sing and act)

Forbidden Broadway was a New York showbiz institution for 27 years: It ended its hilarious run in March, having spoofed big Broadway musicals - the bigger, the spoofier - to the delight of audiences, as well as the stars who came to see themselves satirized. Gerard Alessandrini wrote and directed the revue, winning the Tony for excellence in theater. The installment I saw in 2005 was Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit; the last installment was called Forbidden Broadway Goes to Rehab.

CHRIS BROWN, who was arrested a week ago for allegedly beating up his (ex-)girlfriend, Rihanna, apologized yesterday, saying he was "sorry and saddened" by what happened. Hey, it only took him a week. Brown, 19, followed the celeb mea culpa handbook by invoking God (good) and the media (bad). "Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am over what transpired. I am seeking the counseling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God's help, to emerging a better person," Brown said in a statement.

Who would have thought that about-to-turn-50 Pearce Bunting, who made an enduring name for himself in Philadelphia as an intensely edgy character actor, would be singing and dancing as the sexy Australian "dad" in Mamma Mia!? And in spandex, yet? But there he was one January night not long ago, on the stage of Manhattan's Winter Garden Theater, doing the big Broadway thing, charming the ruffled socks off the little girls in the audience - not to mention their moms. Theatre Exile's production of Blackbird (in previews, opening Wednesday at Plays & Players Theatre)

George Bernard Shaw's early play Mrs. Warren's Profession is a dazzler, and Emily Mann's stylish production does it proud, proving that after more than 100 years, it can hold audiences rapt and, shocking to say, shock us. Unlike contemporary family dramas (dysfunction, drugs, dysfunction, abuse), Shaw's avoids every cliche and defies every sentimental expectation. After it was banned in London, it was published under the umbrella title Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant. And in the theatrical event, Mrs. Warren's Profession is both pleasant (witty, startling)

Though born with the gene for loving musicals, I lack the DNA sequence that allows for ABBA appreciation. Never got the Swedish quartet famous for its marimba-madcap music, Conehead lyrics, and Holiday Barbie costumes. Having seen Mamma Mia! , Phyllida Lloyd's screen rendition of Judy Craymer and Catherine Johnson's $2 billion-at-the box-office-and-still-counting stage phenom, I still don't get it. But I have developed the grudging respect, if not the taste, for the ebullience - ABullience ?

Let's just be frank here - Mamma Mia! is about as critic-proof a musical as you'll ever find. Some people just love ABBA, and others love any creative endeavor to which the prefix "chick" can be applied. When you combine the two, you get $2 billion in box office gross, the Hollywood treatment with Meryl Streep (though the musical already was loosely based on the 1968 film Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell), and a palpable girls-night-out bump in the local restaurant economy. So who cares that I never liked ABBA, even when I was little and supposed to love their bouncy, sunny Nordic tracks, and that romantic comedies automatically trigger my gag reflex?