A wedding, a reunion and a family’s story that plays out on a fictional Greek island, set to the music of ABBA – what more could an audience ask for?
How about a sing-along show and a sensory-friendly matinee for neurodiverse audiences? Stage North will deliver all that, and tell the story of the Sheridan family, an enchanting tale of friendship, love and laughter in Mamma Mia, which opens at the North Peace Cultural Centre on February 21.
The combination of ABBA’s timeless hits, dance numbers and comedy make Stage North’s production of Mamma Mia a show that must be seen.
Director Ted Sloan says that the cast of 42 has been rehearsing since September. After spending two months with a vocal coach, Rheanna Morris-Richert, the cast spent another two months with choreographer Emry Mika, and in January Sloan started blocking the show.
“It’s really a labour of love, with three different directors,” he said.
However, work on the show really began right after last year’s production of Footloose, which was directed by Mika with Sloan as the stage manager.
“Everyone had such so much fun, they started asking Emry what the next one was.”
Sloan volunteered to direct Mamma Mia, which he says was quite hard to get the rights for because “it is quite literally the world’s most popular show. It took about six months to secure the rights, and when we did, we hit the ground running.”
As mentioned, Stage North is trying a couple of new things with this show – the sensory-friendly performance and the sing-along show.
“We’re excited to do two types of shows.”
“We’ve never done a sensory-friendly show, so what that is, is our matinee on Saturday, is the show, but less intense with more explanation,” Sloan explained.
“It’s for neurodivergent audiences, basically people who might not want to come to the theatre because it’s too loud, or it’s too intense. We sit down ahead of time, we introduce everybody, talk about the story – we say hey, these two people are going to fight, but they’re not really fighting – and we kind of encourage the audience to live it with us, and we answer questions afterwards. We really wanted to be as inclusive as we could, because then that night, we’re doing our first ever sing-along show.”
In the sing-along show, which is Saturday, February 22nd at 7:30 p.m., Sloan says the audience will be encouraged to sing along with the big hits, such as Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen and Voulez-Vous. While he doesn’t expect the audience to sing every song, Sloan admits that it might be hard for the audience to resist – it is ABBA, after-all.
In an interesting twist, that reflects the characters in the story, Sloan says that not only has the cast become friends, but some of the cast members are family members. There are a few mother-daughter pairs, some father-daughter pairs and in fact, Sloan’s own mother is the Stage Manager.
“There’s families, and we’ve kind of become a giant family.”
Mamma Mia opens at the North Peace Cultural Centre on Friday, February 21 at 7:30 p.m. and continues February 22 with the sensory-friendly matinee at 2 p.m., and the sing-along show at 7:30 p.m. Three more shows follow the next week on February 27, 28 and March 1, all at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $30 can be purchased online, or in-person at the Cultural Centre Box Office. Tickets for Opening Night are going fast.
