Mamma Mia II: here I go again!

Won’t it be great to sing ABBA songs and see the new Mamma Mia movie? That seed of intention was planted back in April when my ukulele group in Boston dedicated one of our weekly jam sessions to songs from the ABBA GOLD album.

Yesterday, we did just that. After our outdoor ukulele gig at Kew Village Market, I followed Lisa on bicycle to nearby Richmond to celebrate our friend Sue’s birthday with ABBA songs and the Mamma Mia II movie. We brought our soprano ukuleles in anticipation. Should we play and sing before the movie or after? Time decided for us.

As an ABBA fan, or rather, ABBA fanatic, I watched the trailer several times. What exactly would be the plot of this sequel? Which ABBA songs would be included? Would the lesser known songs be introduced? Would there be any new songs? ABBA had announced the group would release two new songs, including “I Still Have Faith in You”. Would these be included in the movie?

As soon as the movie started, I knew that I’d better write down the titles of the songs. I scrambled in the dark for my Hawaiian ink pen, a gift from my most recent Maui visitor to Boston, and the back of a folded menu I had snatched earlier from the corner pub next to Kew Gardens Rail Station. I was as much an ABBA groupie as my childhood friend who sent me $100 cash by snail mail to buy tickets for the Grateful Dead in London. The hundred dollar bill never arrived but we went to see the band anyway. During the concert at Wembley Stadium in 1990, she furiously jotted down the set list while I wondered what was so great about the Grateful Dead.

Between Lisa and a man named Colin or John, I sat centre row in the cinema of Curzon Richmond ready to indulge. The movie opened with Amanda Seyfried singing a capella “Thank You for the Music” to herself as she sent out invitations to the opening of the new hotel dedicated to her late mother Donna, which was played by Meryl Streep in the first movie. What? She’s dead? How did Donna die? As there were no answers in the movie, I’m sure there will be a Mamma Mia III. There has to be.

The clock rewinds to the year 1979. Young Donna and her two closest friends graduate from Oxford. [The graduation scene is set in the great hall of New College, Oxford.] She gets called and walks to the stage to deliver her speech as head of her class. Instead of giving a speech, she sings “When I Kissed the Teacher” and her two friends join her on stage. Although it is politically incorrect by today’s standards, romance between teacher and student is not as uncommon as you think. In fact, one of my ex-colleagues in Hawaii was wooed by a student half his age, or so he claimed. In hindsight, now that she has graduated and they are an official couple, perhaps he had designs on her as he had revealed in a fantasy story that came true. Nonetheless, in this context, it’s not really about Donna kissing a teacher, or any Oxford don for that matter. She simply wants to rebel.

ABBA’s music took me back to my first solo backpacking trip to Europe, which began in Athens early June and ended in Oxford early August. I was 21, free as a bird. I had the arduous task of making my way across Europe on a Young Person’s Eurail Pass and arrive at New College Oxford for a six-week summer course in 20th Century British History. I can most certainly relate to Oxford. I can relate to island hopping in Greece. Had it not been for the sun that scorched my lips after three weeks in Greece, I would have gone to Santorini and other exotic Greek islands.

At 21, I understood Donna’s reply when others asked her what she was going to do.

“I don’t know what my future holds, but the world is wide and I want to make some memories.”

Ironically Donna stayed on the island, single and pregnant, whereas I left Corfu by ferry to Brindisi and train to Florence and beyond. Watching “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” was time travel for me. I can relate to the sun tanned young men who carried my backpack in Athens, who gave me a lift on a motorcycle in Naxos, who charmed me on a moonlit night on the nude beach in Mykonos. I can relate to being fearless, feeling immortal, and totally unaware of the naive nubile nymph from Asia on European soil.

The story of Mamma Mia II is full of corny and tacky bits that made me burst into spontaneous laughing fits. Towards the end, I was wiping tears from my face unashamedly, for it had transported me to another world, the me that was 21.

At that moment, I was conscious of a decision: I have to see it again. I have to learn those songs in the movie I’ve never heard of. First I will compare my list with the order on the soundtrack. I daresay I don’t know ten of the twenty-some songs in this sequel, and that sincerely bothers me. It will be my new quest to find the piano scores and ukulele song sheets.

1. I Wonder (Departure)
2. Why Did It Have To Be Me?
3. Kisses Of Fire
4. Andante, Andante
5. Angel Eyes
6. Hasta Mañana
7. Hole in Your Soul
8. I’ve Been Waiting For You
9. My Love, My Life
10. The Day Before You Came

Richmond on Thames, London, 5th August 2018

Naturally after seeing the movie, we girls wanted to sing and play ABBA songs. Accompanied by our male entourage, Lisa, Sue, and I walked towards the River Thames at sunset. Sue generously bought us drinks from the pub while we decided where to situate ourselves. We made our way to a part of the embankment that reminded me of a scene from the movie “Karma Sutra,” for an Indian guy and girl were sitting on the steps with their feet dangling in the water chatting about sweet nothings.

We found a spot stable enough to navigate our song sheets on our laps while we put down our drinks and tuned our ukuleles in the setting sun.

Sue, the well-travelled birthday girl, casually mentioned that the island in the movie was not in Greece but Croatia. “Is that so?” I was surprised. All along I had imagined the first and second “Mamma Mia!” to be stories set on a Greek island I’d one day visit. “Dalmatian Coast,” she said. “I went to one of the many, many islands when I was younger.” A seed was planted that very instant. A wish. A desire. I need to go there.

On the banks of the River Thames in Richmond, London, we flashmobbed the sunset drinkers on that sunny Sunday afternoon.

“Super Trouper” was on our minds. We had to sing it to get it out of our system. We followed that with the three-chord “I Have a Dream.” In the Hanwell Ukulele Group‘s Summer of HUG 2017 songbook was another popular song “Mamma Mia” opening with a C major chord alternating with C augmented chord. Before long, a crowd was gathering around us three ladies on ukuleles. People applauded. When we ran out of ABBA song sheets at our disposal, continued to Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love” sung Adele-style and other requests.

When the orange sun finally disappeared on the waters of the Thames, we managed one more song that was a request. It was already 9 pm and time to cycle home.