Both Mamma Mia! and The Tempest centre around a single parent figure \u2013 Donna, Prospero \u2013 who lives on a fantasy Mediterranean island. As the marriage of their only daughter \u2013 Sophie, Miranda \u2013 approaches, the parental figure encounters people from their past and tricky relationships from a generation ago. They have to choose whether to move on emotionally, whether to be generous and forgive.<\/p>\n
Both parents concoct a fantastic performance to celebrate their daughter\u2019s wedding, one that includes singing, dancing, and razzle dazzle costumes. Donna and the Dynamos (Donna\u2019s friends Tanya and Rosie) strut their stuff to Super Trouper, as the women used to do in their youth. Prospero commissions his spirit Ariel to stage a masque, with singing, dancing nymphs and reapers and three Roman goddesses \u2013 Juno, Iris and Ceres.<\/p>\n
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This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon \u2013 with a twist.<\/em><\/p>\n One of the most emotionally impactful moments in Mamma Mia! is when Donna sings ABBA\u2019s \u201cSlipping Through My Fingers\u201d as she is thinking about her daughter\u2019s impending marriage. In the theatre, the audience suddenly shift gear. One minute they are a singalong, dancing, happy crowd. The next they are collapsing in a sobbing heap. <\/p>\n The ephemerality of all human relationships also haunts one of The Tempest\u2019s most well-known speeches, Prospero\u2019s \u201cour revels now are ended\u201d. Abruptly curtailing the wedding masque he commissioned the spirit Ariel to stage, Prospero reflects:<\/p>\n We are such stuff And Prospero specifically created the eponymous tempest so that Prince Ferdinand would be shipwrecked on the island and Miranda could fall in love with and marry him. As Prospero says:<\/p>\n I have done nothing but in care of thee But that act of care ensures that Miranda will move on, leaving Prospero behind.<\/p>\n If you look at The Tempest with Mamma Mia! in mind, it turns into a play about family. Nowadays, the core of The Tempest is usually seen to be the master and slave relationship or the power relations and hierarchies associated with colonisation. And there\u2019s no Ariel or enslaved Caliban figure in Mamma Mia!<\/p>\n And yet it is widely accepted that the musical The Lion King \u2013 directed by Julie Taymor in a production that opened in the same year as Mamma Mia! \u2013 is a makeover of Hamlet, even though it\u2019s also missing major characters.<\/p>\n Seeing Mamma Mia! as The Tempest in disguise seems like less of a reach when Prospero is played by, or as, a woman. At least as early as 1984, when Valerie Braddell<\/a> played Prospero as a mother, women have been staking a claim on the role. More high-profile, maternal Prosperos have appeared in recent years. Helen Mirren was clearly a mother, renamed Prospera, in Julie Taymor\u2019s 2010 film of The Tempest<\/a>; as was Alex Kingston<\/a> at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2023 and Sigourney Weaver at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n Finding The Tempest in Mamma Mia! can also help bring out the queerness of Shakespeare\u2019s play. Mamma Mia! joyfully deploys camp, platform shoes and Lycra. It has one queer male character in Harry \u2013 one of Sophie\u2019s three possible fathers. In The Tempest, Ariel is a gender fluid theatre maker, staging spectacles, singing songs, playing music at Prospero\u2019s command. He shifts from maleness to appear as a female harpy, as the goddess Ceres, as a nymph of the sea, and then back to maleness again.<\/p>\n Mamma Mia!\u2018s director Phyllida Lloyd has a history of adapting Shakespeare\u2019s plays to put women\u2019s stories centre stage. I\u2019ve explored this in a book I wrote with theatre academic David Bullen, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Phyllida Lloyd<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lloyd\u2019s female-centred adaptations of Shakespeare can be seen as early as her 1990 The Winter\u2019s Tale at the Manchester Royal Exchange<\/a>, which I wish I had seen. And after Mamma Mia! Lloyd turned mainstream Shakespeare casting upside down with an all-female Taming of the Shrew<\/a> at Shakespeare\u2019s Globe in 2003, starring Janet McTeer and Kathryn Hunter.<\/p>\n Later came what is known as her all-female \u201cShakespeare Trilogy\u201d: Julius Caesar<\/a> in 2012, Henry IV<\/a> in 2014 and The Tempest<\/a> in 2016. All three of these productions were performed as if they were being staged by, and illuminating the stories of, incarcerated women<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mamma Mia! might seem like the anomaly in this CV, but look deeper and you\u2019ll see it is part of a continuum. Given Lloyd\u2019s commitment across her career to hijacking Shakespeare in order to let women\u2019s voices be heard, seeing Mamma Mia! as a remix of The Tempest doesn\u2019t seem so strange.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Schafer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mamma Mia!, the 1999 jukebox musical built around the songs of the pop group ABBA, became a huge hit in the theatre internationally and later a commercially successful feature film. It has inspired a host of spinoffs including a prequel film, an immersive dining experience and fan fiction. What if I told you that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAs dreams are made on, and our little life
\nIs rounded with a sleep<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nOf thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/283513\/count.gif\")
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