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.
Now it is Ball’s turn to show us what she is made of as seven wannabe Sophies and seven wannabe Skys, most with at least some training in the arts, are gathered on the Greek island of Corfu. They are put through a variety of workshops and tasks designed to sift the Meryl Streeps from the Pierce Brosnans. They are then required to put on showstopping performances with less rehearsal time than I give myself before a call to query a gas bill.
Mamma Mia! I Have A Dream has four judges, three of whom have reason to be there (singer-songwriter Jessie Ware, Glee star and Olivier award-winner Amber Riley, singer Samantha Barks, on maternity leave from playing Elsa in Frozen at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London) and Alan Carr. He states his total lack of qualification for the role at the outset (“Vibrato, whatever. I can’t sing, I can’t dance, but I know what’s good”), and I would love to know whether the other judges feel that the inclusion of his comic but ignorant presence is as cynical a move as it looks from the outside. I wish programmes were not so terrified of letting the experts demonstrate knowledge. Would just a little substance put such a crimp in the show’s style? You feel it most when veterans Martin Lowe (musical director) and Anthony van Laast (creative director and choreographer) – unsmiling, possibly unbriefed and only just realising what a farrago they have agreed to take part in – arrive. They each get about three seconds of screen time before the camera falls back affrighted.
Still, we hardly have time to consider such niceties because, even allowing for the customarily frenetic pace of such competition shows, Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream is a wildly rushed business. You constantly feel as though you have arrived in the middle of things without explanation. Unlike previous shows, we don’t see the initial open auditions, so there is no whittling down of the thousands to hundreds to longlist to shortlist to those who make the final cut. We just zoom straight in on the chosen 14 dashing about their villa screaming with performative delight. If it is delight brought on by some sun on stucco, then I would like them, too, to be studied by science. We are shown virtually nothing of the workshops and even less of the rehearsals and hear little more than a few platitudes from the judges after each performance. And although these are all full-length renditions of Abba’s greatest hits and great fun, there is no tension, no investment, no context for any of it. Maybe this will improve as the weeks go on and contestants become fewer. Or maybe they will just fill the time with more screaming. This could be my Waterloo.
• The first episode of Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream aired on Sunday on ITV. It is available now on ITVX.
