Maybe my mind periodically wipes itself of as many wearying memories as it can, but I don’t remember there being this much screaming the first time around. It is possible that there has never been this much screaming in any reality show. Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream comprises 14 young would-be musical theatre stars competing for the chance to make their debuts as Sophie or Sky in the long-running Abba-stuffed West End show, so brace yourselves. Zoe Ball is presenting, and it is like watching her herd cats.
The first time this kind of caper was attempted was way back, before Andrew Lloyd Webber became the sort of Tory peer who would fly in on his private plane to vote in favour of cutting tax credits, and John Barrowman was unproblematically everywhere. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? hit our screens in 2006, with hundreds of hopefuls entering the competition to take on the lead role in Lloyd Webber’s stage revival of The Sound of Music. Negotiations with Scarlett Johansson for the part of nun-nanny had fallen through, leaving us with one of history’s most tantalising what-ifs. Anyway, Connie Fisher won and the whole thing was popular enough to spawn a similar hunt a year later for a star for Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (remember Lee Mead?) in Any Dream Will Do, followed by a Nancy and three Olivers for his revival of Oliver! in 2008’s I’d Do Anything, and a Dorothy for his Wizard of Oz in Over the Rainbow in 2010. All in all, one could surmise that Lloyd Webber musicals did very well from the BBC’s 10- to 13-week promotions for them, and that Graham Norton, who presented the lot without his enthusiasm flagging for a moment, should be studied by science as a potential source of perpetual energy.
