Mamma-Mia!

Saturday my mom, my sister and I trekked up to Baltimore to see Mamma-Mia! (The exclamation point is part of the show title, not my overbearing excitement - though I will say I was quite excited.) The day did not get off to an auspicious start.

I drove to my sister's house to pick her up. Then we stopped to top off the tank and get breakfast at WaWa before heading to mom's. About half way up, the breakfast I had just finished eating decided that it needed to make a reappearance. Did I mention I was driving? I have a new campaign - "Don't drive and puke" It was...unpleasant. (It was motivated by a new medication I'm on that really needs to come with a "take with food" warning, but doesn't.) From that point, my sister was terrified of my driving (not like she started out with incredible confidence as I am her baby sister and stuck, it would seem, around age ten.) The rest of the drive, however, was relatively uneventful despite the rain and wind as Ernesto finished his little visit to our area.

We arrived in Baltimore around noon and, as the show didn't start til 2, wandered to the Inner Harbor to find some lunch. We ended up at an "Irish Pub" called Tir Na Nog. And may I just say I put the description in quotes for a reason. I've never seen a more commercialized bid to cash in on all things Irish - and I've been to Fado. However, I was pleased - or perhaps I should say "chuffed" as it was pretending to be Irish - to see Potato and Leek soup on the menu. So I ordered that...and quite enjoyed my mushroom soup. If they had a potato or leek in that soup, then I'm a monkey's aunt. But it was tasty mushroom soup none the less and the sandwich I got was also quite good. Just not Irish.

And may I also state for the record that, while I understand it's the chic thing to do these days, I just don't get dumping truffle oil on top of a perfectly lovely soup. It looks nasty - big pools of oil just floating on the top of your soup - bleh.

Anyway, we went from there back to the Hippodrome. It's a lovely redone theater (redone in the classic theater style). The seats we had were ok - neither great nor bad. We were in the right orchestra and did miss a teeny bit of action stage left because of the giant speaker column, but I don't think we missed much. The show itself is delightful. They did a fantastic job blending the Abba songs into the story (or, more accurately, blending the story around the songs). The singing was great, the acting fantastic, and the dancing about what you'd expect for Abba music (very disco-ish). I think this is something even Gwynne, with her dislike of Abba, would enjoy.

Mom would consider me remiss, however, if I failed to point out that the story begins with the appearance of a good moral and then spirals down into the typical post-Christian cultural statement that marriage is an institution for people who belong in an institution. So don't go expecting a positive cultural statement, you won't find it here.