LONDON -- Millions of Americans have fond memories of the British rock invasion of the '60s. But are we ready for a retro '70s onslaught?
Three London stage musicals are merrily thumping along with 25-year-old pop hits of loud, steady backbeats. One show even features lapels as wide as bat wings and women's hair as poufy and frosted as Farrah Fawcett's in her heyday.It's "Saturday Night Fever" (adapted from the 1977 film) that will begin previews on Broadway in September. It features electrifying dance (but not much else) to recommend it. "Mamma Mia" is a sure bet to follow across the pond. This out-of-nowhere hit tells a sweet, appealingly goofy family tale by ingeniously cobbling together old hits of the Swedish group Abba, inspiring Gen X'ers and boomers in jeans and business suits to stand up and boogie to reprises of "Dancing Queen" (It's better than you remember).
"Soul Train" is also running. Judging from the posters ("Afros" that could barely fit through a door) the revue lampoons '70s style as much as it celebrates such hits as "Sexual Healing."
That's the key to the '70s mini-craze: tunes. The theater is now reclaiming, under the banner of nostalgia, the generation of pop-rock songwriters it lost a quarter-century ago. After "Hair" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" spun Top 40 radio hits, theater music and pop-rock hits went separate ways. They're beginning to come back together as aging '70s hitmakers (Elton John and his "Aida," Paul Simon and "The Capeman") shift styles and venture into the riskier waters of theater.
There's less risk in repackaging old hits, as in the Bee Gees' "Fever" and Abba's "Mamma Mia." Especially now that a graying baby-boom generation, raised on rock more than theater, has the disposable income for theatergoing (top London tickets cost "only" $55, about $20 behind Gotham rates).
The verdict: "Fever" is Broadway bound, but it's the far less familiar "Mamma Mia" that would win Gotham cheers.
In "Saturday Night Fever," the hits indeed keep on coming: "Stayin' Alive," "How Deep Is Your Love." The Brooklyn accents are so well done you'd never guess this is a mostly British cast. Director-choreographer Arlene Phillips brings the explosive energy and cool control seen in her direction of "Lord of the Dance." With a very large (47) cast, "Fever" slams you with a spectacle of movement in the mirror-ball bedazzlement of the disco floor.
But what the show has gained in athleticism, it's lost in heart. The campy book by American Nan Knighton ("The Scarlet Pimpernel") makes Tony Manero (Ben Richards), the working-class Everyman who lives to dance, even more of a sexist jerk than John Travolta was at the beginning of the movie ("When can we make it, Tony?" pleads one of his female admirers, in the sexual euphemism of the day). Tony's redemption becomes even more jarringly sentimental, unconvincing. Richards is an incredible dancer but lacks Travolta's vulnerability and charm.
"Fever" shapes up as Broadway's next "Footloose": a soulless retread of a teens-in-mischief movie. An exercise in human motion, not emotion.
"Mamma Mia" has it both ways. It taps the decade's melodic treasure chest without getting stuck in '70s camp. Catherine Johnson's disarming book uses two time frames. In the present, Sophie (Lisa Stokke), a 21-year-old English girl, plans a wedding at the Greek isle hotel of her single mother (Siobhan McCarthy). She secretly invites the three men who were involved with her mother during the summer of her birth, one of whom might be her father.
The wedding reunites the mother with pals from a '70s singing group (Louise Plowright as the peroxide bombshell; Jenny Galloway as the short, funny one), and the women playfully reprise "their" hits as if they'd been the lead singers of Abba.
The theatrical context creates new dimension for Benny Andersson-Bjorn Ulvaeus songs that used to sound so bubble-gummy, almost creepily antiseptic, on the radio. "Name of the Game" becomes a poignant query from Sophie to the man who may be her father. When chubby yet lusty Galloway challenges a hunky male to "Take a Chance on Me," the audience roars its delighted surprise. As we wonder how Johnson will fit these old songs into her new story, the book becomes a kind of Easter egg hunt for adults.
The '70s and the '90s generations are symbolically reconciled in the cross-generational blowout of the wedding reception, to the soaring strains of "Dancing Queen."
If the show can keep the special chemistry of the British cast (in other words, if Actor's Equity will loosen the hiring rules that blocked "Oklahoma!" from crossing to New York), "Mamma Mia" could be one of the most surprising of Broadway hits.
"Saturday Night Fever," "Mamma Mia" at the Prince Edward Theatre, London. Open-ended runs.
Dan Hulbert writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constiution.