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[This Just In]

THEATER
Naked guys and ABBA

BY CAROLYN CLAY

Broadway in Boston/SFX Theatrical Group announced its 2001-’02 season this week as “Dancing Queen” played on the PA and employees passed out Day-Glo necklaces. So what was up? Björn Ulvaeus’s birthday? Retro Day at the Omni Parker House? Nope, the next downtown theater season is set to kick off in August with the London and Toronto hit musical Mamma Mia!, the score of which consists of 22 chunks of ABBA gold. “Shirley Valentine meets Muriel’s Wedding” is one description of the show, which is set on a Greek island and features a fortysomething single mom recalling “carefree days and careless nights” while her daughter dreams of a white wedding. The show has been running on London’s West End for two years and comes to Boston’s Colonial Theatre prior to opening on Broadway.

Also on the Broadway in Boston/SFX docket are 2000 Tony winners Contact (Best Musical) and Copenhagen (Best Play). Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman and written by John Weidman, Contact is a musical triptych in which three stories are told entirely in dance, with music ranging from Tchaikovsky to Squirrel Nut Zippers. It comes to the Colonial in December. No word as to who will appear as the frostily gorgeous Girl in the Yellow Dress, in which garment former Rockette Deborah Yates, who plays the role at Lincoln Center, has brought more men to their knees than Helen of Troy. Copenhagen, which comes to the Wilbur next February, is Michael Frayn’s heady consideration of “quantum ethics” built on a mysterious 1941 meeting in the city of the title between nuclear physicists Werner Heisenberg, who worked for Hitler, and Niels Bohr, who wound up at Los Alamos.

As the present season has proved, not every show ballyhooed in the season announcement will actually show up on Boylston or Tremont Streets. But as of now we are also promised a new musical, with score by David Yazbek and book by Tony winner Terrence McNally, based on the film The Full Monty — which event actually does take place for a nanosecond at the end. That’s scheduled for the Colonial in January. And in April, Ann-Margret, in her first stage role ever, turns up at the same theater (which will be remade as legendary Texas brothel the Chicken Ranch) in a revival of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Also scheduled is a pre-Broadway tryout, at the Colonial in November, of a new musical based on the 1971 film The Summer of ’42, with music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum and book by Hunter Foster, based on the Cape Cod coming-of-age story by Herman Raucher. And in the recycling department, there will be a revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific, as well as another return by the bangers and whackers of Stomp.

For subscription information, call Broadway in Boston at (617) 880-2400.

Issue Date: March 15 - 22, 2001