Hi everyone, and welcome back to one of your favorite segments, The Sound of Musicals. 欢迎回来大家最喜欢的板块之一【曲外之音】. And it has been a long time, Oliver.

Hello, it has been a very long time, yes. But I'm very happy to be back. It's nice to be back.

So what is the first musical we're gonna talk about now that you're back？

I thought because it's been such a long time, maybe you would like to choose something for today.

Okay. I was hoping you would ask that. Before I say the name of the musical, I want you to listen to this music. (Music) Does it sound familiar to you？

It does. I think I recognize the band who made those songs.

Okay, so you know which musical we're gonna talk about today.

I can take a very good guess, yes.

And it is ?

I’m guessing it's going to be Mamma Mia, the musical made around the music of ABBA, the songs we just heard.

Yeah, I mean, I sort of got the feeling that Mamma Mia wouldn't be your top picks.

It's not in my top ten, no.

Yeah, because it's so lighthearted. It's such a fun musical and you like the heavier stuff like you want it miserable instead of lighthearted.

It is more my style is the heavier hitting musicals with deeper messages, but I do enjoy a nice, lighthearted musical as well sometimes. There's a place for them, definitely there is .

Yeah, I mean musical theater is supposed to be more lighthearted, right? Especially compared to things like opera.

Oh, definitely so. Compared to opera and the standard plays, in many cases, musicals are the the lighthearted, forget the world for one evening and jump into a story with good music. You can dance and sing to later, things like that, musicals are a good escape.

Okay, so Oliver, since you know a lot about musicals, even the ones that you don't particularly favor, can you give us a little bit of the background like when was the premiere and just a general background?

Okay, yeah. So the musical first of all, it came out in 1999 in London. So that was when it premiered in London. And a year later in 2000, it made the trip over to the US, it has been all around the world since then. It is popular in many places, more than 50 countries and it's been on all of the continents. So it's a very, very popular musical.

Yeah. It is very popular and has been on Broadway in West End, in London for so many years. So this musical is called a jukebox musical点唱机音乐剧jukebox is, you know the olden days when you go to a bar there is like a jukebox where you can put in a coin and you can choose the music you wanted to play. So why is it called jukebox musical?

It's actually a really popular thing nowadays. Lots of bands are getting their own musicals. ABBA was one of the first, but since then there have been lots of them. They're called jukebox musicals because they use music that wasn't designed for the musical. It was released by a band. You could buy it in a shop or nowadays you can download it and listen to it online, but it's not connected to the musical.

People have used that and made the musical around it, rather than the other way, which is more common.

Yeah, it's basically, the traditional musicals, they are completely like original songs. They were written for this particular musical. But a jukebox musical is, first of all, there is a very popular singer or very popular band. And then because their albums or their songs are so popular, people... the producers decided to make a whole musical based on their existing music.

That's exactly yeah. They're kind of using the popularity of the music that's already there to create a musical. So they make a story to fit the music rather than in the traditional way they make the music to fit the story. So it's kind of a reverse, but it does mean they're really popular with audiences because everybody knows the songs, everybody can sing along. So they're really popular.

Especially if you're a fan of the band or the singer.

Definitely yeah.

So Mamma Mia is based on songs written and performed by this really popular Swedish band called ABBA.

For those of you who are really really young, you probably have never heard them before. They were active actually before my time they were active in the 70s and maybe a little bit of the 80s. But even nowadays you can still hear their music.

Yeah, it is still very popular nowadays. Lots of, I mean in the UK, we still hear it in TV shows and such sometimes, it appears every now and again. Personally I learned about it from my family. My parents, my mom loves ABBA. She's always listening to it. So that's how I was introduced to ABBA through my mother's musical tastes. But there are some good songs definitely.

I usually just hear it, do you know where? In gay bars.

It’s a common music to be played in gay bars definitely ,yeah.

Yeah, last time I was in London went to a gay bar and then there was within an hour and a half. I heard already 3~4 ABBA songs. I think it's just because it's so catchy and it's very happy. And later on obviously we're gonna get into the music a bit more. So Oliver, can I still give you the task of giving us the story?

You can certainly. I might be quite a brief overview this time, as I said before, there's not much heavy hitting content here, but there are some very good themes that we can talk about later. So, a brief overview for Mamma Mia.

One of the main characters is a girl called Sophie. She's 20 years old and she's about to get married. She lives on a Greek island with her mother, but she doesn't know who her father is. She's never met him, but she's about to get married. She wants to meet him so that he can walk her down the aisle and give her away when she gets married. So it's very important to her.

Yes, let me explain a little bit. 这里要给大家解释一下, 其实现在中国有的时候, 咱们看那种西式婚礼也是这样, 就新娘的爸爸要把新娘带进去, 然后她的手交给新郎.

So it's actually very important for girls to have their father do that, as part of a ritual, basically, it's also obviously showing the bonds and the fatherly love.

It is,yes. It's a very old tradition in the UK and in many other western countries that father gives away their daughter when they get married, it used to be symbolizing her passing from her father's family into her husband's family and that change of family, as I said. But nowadays it's more of just a traditional thing. It's part of the ceremony.

Okay, and, so she doesn't know her father. What did she do?

So yes. She doesn't know her father, but she finds her mother's diary. And in the diary, her mother writes about three men that she had a relationship with, about the time when Sophie was born. So she doesn't know which of these three men is her father. Her mother doesn't know which of these three men is her father.

Okay, I remember these three men, so you have Sam, who is an American architect, you have Harry, who is a British banker, and you have Bill who is from Australia, who is interestingly an adventurer. This is so stereotypical.

Yes the names and the jobs they do feel very stereotypical when you list them like that. Definitely so. But she doesn't know who her father is. Is it Sam, is it Bill or Harry? She invites them all to her wedding. She invites them all to this island. They don't know why they are going there. They're not sure, but they go anyway.

Actually, I think you missed out a little bit of a detail. I think the reason why they went is because she... like, Sophie, the young girl was pretending to be her mother when writing this email. So basically they came for their old flame, their old girlfriend.

That's it. Yes, I did forget that little detail.

Okay, so she invites them to this island. A lot happens during the time, there's lots of confusion from Sophie’s mother Donna when these three men who she had relationships with suddenly turn up on this island where they all live, just before her daughter's wedding, she panics a little bit. There's lots of confusion and stuff that happens.

Eventually, these three men, they realize why they are here. They all realize, oh wait, I could be Sophie’s father. I am Sophie’s father, is what they think, actually. But they don't talk to each other about this. They don't know really what happened with the others. So they all go to Sophie and say, I know I'm your father. Let me walk you down the aisle.

That's actually quite nice.

It's very sweet. It is very sweet of them, but it does make a problem. Because before Sophie had no idea who her father was, now she has three. It comes a little bit difficult when she has to who's going to...she has to choose who is going to walk her down the aisle. Exactly.

Let me jump in for a little bit detail, so lots of things happened. And these three men, if you still remember them, Sam, Harry, and Bill. Sam was actually the mother's... Donna’s biggest love, like the love of her life. I think they missed each other because of lots of different reasons, not because they ever stopped loving each other.

So I think they still had feelings for each other. And then Harry, the British guy turned out to be gay and actually has a husband already. And Bill, on this island, while claiming to be the father he's already going after, chasing after one of Donna’s girlfriends. So he's bit of a player, I guess, in that sense.

So eventually really only Sam was the one who is still in love with Donna, the mom. And then was it, Sophie and her fiancee,the young girl actually decided not to get married the last second , still wanna to travel the world, enjoy the exciting life instead of settling down. And then Donna, the mom and her old flame Sam, they decided let's not let the whole wedding banquet, wedding preparation go to waste. Let's get married instead.

Yes , so it kind of goes right back to Sam and Donna when they were first together.

And both of them wanted to get married at the time but as you said, events just kind of overtook them both and it didn't happen. Sam actually went away, got married to somebody else, had children and then got divorced before he came back and found Donna. But don't waste a wedding, so they got married. At the end of the show is the big wedding party after Donna and Sam's wedding, not Sophie and her fiance.

Just basically happy ending, and Sophie and her fiance,they went away to explore the world to travel, to enjoy their youth.

Yeah, it's a very happy ending. Everybody kind of ends up where they want to be at the end, which is quite nice to see in a musical, a nice happy ending there.

So I'm sure you guys are gonna feel that lightheartedness, the happy ending, the general mood, the general ambience of the music.

In our next episode when we get into the music and also the themes, but there are some quite interesting themes. It's not just sort of like brain dead fun.

No, there's definitely some very interesting and important themes that we can talk about for today's world really. It's kind of masked by the lighthearted fun but there is some interesting stuff going on underneath. Yeah.

Okay,and on that note, we're gonna wrap up today's episode. If you have any comments on Mamma Mia, or if you have any request for other musicals, leave us a comment in the comment section.

Thank you, Oliver for coming to the studio.

Thank you for having me back.

All right. We'll see you next time.

Goodbye.