'Mamma Mia!' returns to Grand Rapids

Early into "Mamma Mia!," you realize that the show will not be resisted. Not that many will try. But if anyone does (arms crossed, one imagines, perhaps a beret tilted at a disapproving angle), the show will twirl, mug and sing into a hairbrush. Anything to crack a smile, in other words. Which it will.

This isn't just another jukebox musical. It's a show filled to bursting with charm, life and heart, not to mention more than twenty songs by ABBA.

Ten years after it first came to Grand Rapids, the musical has returned. The touring production was onstage at DeVos Performance Hall through Dec. 1. A decade later, the reason for its lasting success is obvious--this is a show people love.

As it begins, 20-year-old bride-to-be Sophie (Amy Weaver), having read her mother's diary, has invited three men to her wedding (any of whom might be her father). Sophie wrote to them as her mother, not telling her she'd done so. The possibility that there was a fourth candidate, one not memorialized in the diary, isn't touched upon. 

Each of the men shows, arriving simultaneously on the Greek island where Donna (Stephanie Genito), Sophie's mother, has built her life. Each of the men is distinct. Bill (Jim Newman) is a Hemingway-esque wrier/adventurer. Sam (Blake Price) is an architect. Harry (Rob Marnell) is a banker. Each has unresolved feelings for and about Donna, the woman they loved, however briefly, over 20 years ago.

The men have their moments, but they pale in comparison to the women. Donna, together with her old friends Tanya (Jalynn Steele) and Rosie (Carly Sakolove), is fabulous. In one of the show's very best scenes, Tanya and Rosie attempt to cheer Donna up by singing "Dancing Queen." It starts off funny and gets funnier as it goes along. Audience members shook with laughter. Minutes after it ended, I realized I was still smiling.

It was far from the last moment I found myself smiling. There are endless reasons to, from the wetsuit-clad dancers in "Lay All Your Love On Me" to the goofy passion of "Take A Chance On Me." But there's room for other emotions, too. "The Winner Takes It All" is devastating, less due to its lyrics--ABBA had a tendency of approximating sense when writing in English, rather than nailing it--than to Genito's powerful delivery of them, and from the melody itself.

It's been said that every woman's relationship with her mother is complicated, as every man's is with his father. It seems to be more true than not. As the show approaches its climax, long-hidden resentments and regrets surface, threatening to turn the show from celebration to dirge. But "Mamma Mia!" wants you to leave the show happier than you walked in. 

It's likely that most audience members will be familiar with the story, largely because of the generally faithful 2008 movie. They'll come, then, not for big surprises, but to have a great time--something "Mamma Mia!" provides in spades.

By the time the encores started, the audience was on its feet and I was holding Heidi, my eight-year-old daughter, so she could see the action as we danced along. I don't know whose smile was bigger.