Mamma Mia!, here we go again...

"What a night..." :-)
When I arrived back in Seoul after the summer break I saw posters advertising a run of Mamma Mia! in Seoul and, after seeing the live musical for the first time in London just a few weeks prior, I knew I had to get a ticket.  Fast forward a few (okay, more like six) months...


I had my first musical theater experience in Seoul two weekends ago when I went with some friends to see Notre Dame de Paris--the English version.  The show was great, but definitely not the Disney-fied version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame that we all know and love.  If you've never read Victor Hugo's novel about the Hunchback, the be prepared for a spoiler...everyone dies at the end.  It's quite a tragic story, but lovely when mixed with song and dance.  Seeing this show motivated me to finally book those Mamma Mia! tickets.


I should probably mention that Mamma Mia! was not the English version, so I was a little nervous that I wouldn't be engaged in three hours of dialogue delivered in Korean.  Boy was I wrong--the show turned out to be fantastic and absolutely hilarious!  I went with my friend Erin, who like me LOVES the show, and we had a blast.  I'm almost 100% positive that we were the only waeguks (translation=foreigners) in the building, but that just added to the fun.  When we stopped to take pictures with the cardboard cutouts of the characters, our Korean counterparts followed.  Here are a few pictures of us playing around before the show...

Because we knew the story so well, it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on in each scene and we were both quite amused just watching the actors deliver the dialogue we know so well in Korean.  Essentially we giggled our way through the entire show and discovered lots of non-translatable words--dancing queen, chiquitita, Sophie (pronounced as Soapy), and mamma mia!  In case you're wondering, yes, the songs were also sung in Korean...by spandex wearing, booty shaking Korean actors and actresses.  This was strange at first, but by the end of the show I was really enjoying hearing the Korean versions.  I wonder if ABBA ever could have imagined that their famous lyrics would be translated into a language as foreign to us as Korean?!  I'm sure you're also dying to know that I was the bad foreigner who sung along with all of the songs...in English of course, but rather quietly so as not to disturb my neighbors with my horrific singing:).  Lucky for me, the finale song Waterloo was sung in English and I was out of my seat singing at the top of my lungs and shaking my booty too!  As we left the theater I thought about what fun it must be to perform such a great production night after night in front of a lively audience.  Maybe I need to work harder on my Korean so I can audition for the next run...hehehe!