Mamma Mia - here they go again

The international tour of Mamma Mia! is proving more popular than ever. Photo / Supplied

Bar owners of Auckland, please take note: When the cast of Mamma Mia! roll into town next month, please, please, please do not break out your Best of Abba collection.

It's not that the team don't love the Swedish pop stars - principal performer Jackie Clune compared meeting Anni-Frid Lyngstad in London last year to a visit from the Queen - they would just rather save their enthusiasm for the stage.

Plus, both Clune and her co-star Miria Parvin confess, it's a little embarrassing when someone puts on an Abba record and they start singing along. Or worse, dancing.

"You can't help it," laughs Parvin, who plays Clune's daughter Sophie. "If you hear Mamma Mia!, you automatically start doing the dance moves. It's quite sad really."

Parvin and Clune are in Bangkok, where they are performing a three-week run of the show before heading to New Zealand for a national tour which hits Auckland's Civic Theatre from September 23.

It's been five years since the musical last visited New Zealand - a short time between drinks by our theatre standards - but the international tour is proving more popular than ever after last year's box office smash, starring Meryl Streep.

Clune plays Streep's character Donna, but actually inhabited the role long before the Oscar-winner donned her dungarees.

"I was very disappointed [when they signed Streep] because I really thought they were going to ask me," she jokes.

But she admits graciously that Streep brought something to the role that she hadn't previously thought of.

"I think I'm quite feisty and strong and independent. That's my take on Donna," she says. "When I saw the movie and saw Meryl being much more girly, and good fun, and sexy, I thought, 'oh yeah, well that's a possibility too'. So I've nicked a little of that from Meryl," she laughs heartily.

Clune first brought Donna to life in the hit musical in 2007, before returning to the West End for a year with Billy Elliot. It was there she met the original Abba star Lyngstad - as well as another Mamma Mia cohort, Pierce Brosnan.

"He's delicious," she says dreamily. "He was so charming and sexy."

But not much of a singer, right?

"I don't think it matters! As long as the girls can sing in Mamma Mia!, that's the most important thing."

Produced by the same creative team as the stage show, the film version became the surprise hit of the northern summer last year, earning US$609.8 million (NZ$890 million) worldwide.

Which, understandably, was the cause of some concern among the stage cast, who were unsure how the film would impact on their own careers.

"I was wondering about that, thinking 'Is it going to affect the show negatively? Are people going to say, 'well, we've seen the film, we don't need to see the show'?' But in fact the opposite is true.

"Brilliantly, for us, it's just whetted people's appetite for Abba and for the show."

Parvin, who joined the cast late last year, didn't see the film until after she had begun rehearsals. Not deliberately, she says somewhat sheepishly - she was just waiting for it to come out on DVD.

"I'm quite glad I did, because although it is exactly the same storyline, the girl who plays Sophie in the film has her own take on it.

"I have a really strong mother figure in the show. Jackie Clune plays her so strong and feisty that if I were to have taken my role model from the film, I would have been drowned by Jackie's performance.

"I needed to match up to that strength because obviously mother and daughter are very similar."

Born and raised in Finland, just across the border from Abba's homeland, Parvin grew up singing and dancing to Abba.

"I remember being 8 years old and going to a Halloween party dressed as Benny. We sang Take a Chance on Me, with a tennis racquet and a hair brush, with a fake beard on.

"I've loved it since I was four years old and I know the songs inside out."

But, she points out, there is an intense rivalry between Finland and Sweden - similar to our own trans-Tasman competition - which means she could never claim Abba as her own.

"We hate the fact people mistake Swedish things as Finnish or Finnish things as Swedish. We're quite firm about the fact Abba is not actually Finnish."

Performing Abba's hits night after night may sound exhausting but both Clune and Parvin say the music can't help but get the better of you.

"I find that even if I'm tired of grumpy, by the end of the show I'm really enjoying it," says Clune.

"I sound like a real PR dweeb but it's just genuinely good fun. We get to jump around with microphones, belting out pop songs. That's what I always wanted to do as a child."

And if the cast get caught up in the emotion of it all, it's nothing compared to the audiences that pack the theatres each night.

The show is infamous for getting the crowd up and moving each night, singing along to the 70s' chart hits.

"It's crazy," says Parvin. "My father, who hates musicals, was dancing in the aisles! I couldn't believe it. It really is musical Prozac."

It's not all happy clapping though, says Clune. The audience has also been known to get swept up in the drama of the show.

"When we were in Belfast, the audiences were crazy. They used to shout things out all the time. Often in quite serious moments.

"One woman, one night - because Donna has slept with three different men and doesn't know which one's the father - a woman shouted out, 'She's a whore!' during a really serious, quiet bit."

It's all part of the experience, says Clune, who admits she is the ultimate Mamma Mia! champion. Already signed for another year with the tour, the actress says she never tires of the songs or the story.

Just please, don't push her. Put away those Abba records right now and save it for the theatre.

Who: Jackie Clune and Miria Parvin star in the musical, Mamma Mia!
Where: Civic Theatre
When: From September 23
Tickets: From www.the-edge.co.nz