You will dance, you will jive, you will have the time of your life. You will feel like a dancing queen as you watch the ABBA-inspired musical “Mamma Mia!”
From Broadway to Vegas and now Eugene, “Mamma Mia!” is playing the Silva Concert Hall at the Hult Center through Sunday.
“Mamma Mia!” is part of the new wave of “jukebox” musicals, which use several songs by one composer to create a story.
If you attend the musical expecting to hear the story of ABBA, you will be disappointed.
For ABBA enthusiasts, “Mamma Mia!” is like the concert they never had a chance to see, but for people who are completely unfamiliar with the group, the plot is fun enough to keep them interested.
The musical opens with a young girl, Sophie, mailing wedding invitations to three men who could potentially be her father.
Her mother, who owns a hotel on an unnamed Greek island, refuses to speak about that part of her life.
When all three men show up for the wedding at the same time, Sophie struggles to keep them hidden from her mother.
As the story goes on, the mother realizes she still loves one of the men.

The Greek island angle does not translate to Swedish pop on paper, but it’s amazing how well the 21 featured ABBA songs go with the story line.
The actress who plays the mother is brilliant.
She might not be the most convincing actress, but she has incredible pipes.
Her voice is a perfect match to the enchanting vocals of ABBA’s Agnetha Åse Fältskog.
The musical is filled with hilarious innuendo and some more blatant references to sex.
One of the funniest moments in the play comes when one of the potential fathers and the mother’s best friend start getting intimate as the wedding party walks in. It draws the biggest laughs from the audience.
Another great scene is a dance number by several men in tight purple scuba suits, complete with snorkels and fins.
At Tuesday’s opening-night performance, the crowd cheered wildly after every scene and most of the audience sang along with the actors.
If you closed your eyes during the performance, you felt as if you were transported back to a time when wall-of-sound was the rage and disco was actually a good idea.
“Mamma Mia!” is the perfect heartwarming play, and it gives you a socially acceptable way to geek out and enjoy the delicious sounds of the Swedish pop machine ABBA.
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