妈妈咪呀！中文版 Mamma Mia! Chinese Version

The weekend before last, six of us went to watch Mamma Mia! in Chinese at the brand new Banlam (Minnan) Grand Theatre 闽南大戏院 in Xiamen. We'd all seen the English version of the musical before, either the film or the production, so were looking forward to see how the Chinese would do it, how much they would translate etc. This was a good way of practising our Chinese listening as we all knew the story so could follow what the actors on stage were saying.

The tickets cost 380元 (about £38) each so were quite expensive. This means that a lot of Chinese people probably wouldn't be able to afford it which explains why there were so many empty seats. The show was scheduled to start at 7:30pm and Alex and I rushed to get there having got lost up a mountain on the main university campus that afternoon! For some reason taxis weren't picking up from outside of the university gate, just parking their cars, getting out and socialising with other taxi drivers. Our guess is that as it was near 7pm, they were changing shifts then and didn't want to pick anybody up. When a taxi driver finally stopped for us he didn't know the address as the theatre and general area around it is so new. Luckily the next guy knew and got us to the right place with 5 minutes to spare!

It turned out we needn't have worried as the theatre didn't seem to work in the same way they do in Europe. Normally the time on the ticket is when the curtain goes up and doors close, some theatres not allowing latecomers in until after the interval. However, when we arrived no one seemed to be in much of a rush to get in. Our seats were on the second floor but we were told to take the lift up to the third rather than take the stairs. Confused, we went up to the third floor and found our seats fairly easily. I still don't understand why the system works that way! We sat down expecting the show to start straight away but had a 15 minute wait until music suddenly blasted out and the show began. We've realised that the Chinese don't seem to do quiet music. In bars, clubs and theatres as well apparently, the music is so loud that you can't hope to have much of a conversation! I think it made us all jump when it suddenly came on at the start of Mamma Mia!

Slightly blurred shot of inside the theatre (I forgot to bring my camera so this was taken with my iPod)

The production was very well done - the singing, dancing and acting was all to a very high standard. Alex saw the English version on West End this summer and said that everything was the same including set, costumes and dance moves. The only difference was the language. It turned out that almost everything, including the songs, was translated into Chinese. Most of the time they kept the English title within the song e.g. "Dancing Queen! 十七岁(17 years old)" but not all the time as "Gimme Gimme Gimme" became "给我给我为我 (Give me Give me Give me)". I think the translation was quite well done in that it wasn't literal translation. I managed to understand about 50% of the dialogue, helped by knowing the story, so could follow what was going on. Every so often there would be a joke and all the Chinese members of the audience would burst out laughing while we were looking around a bit lost though!

There was a short interval in the middle but we decided to remain in our seats and discuss what we all thought of the first half. Everyone seemed to be glad we'd came. The second half began with another blast of music and was again very enjoyable. The star of the show had to be the mother, Donna. The actress who played her had a great voice and all the audience seemed to love her. There was a bit of an awkward moment at the end when the cast took their bows as Donna went up to the front of the stage first with a huge round of applause followed by Sophie (the daughter and arguably the main/one of the main characters) getting a much quieter polite clap. Throughout the performance I had wondered whether they would do any of the songs in English and they finished with Waterloo, finally giving us a song to sing along to! After the performance I went to buy a programme as a souvenir from the show. The lady was also selling CDs of the soundtrack which I was very tempted to buy until I found out it was in English, not Chinese, and they cost 100元 (£10) each. I settled for just getting a programme costing 80元 (£8) which is something nice to have and does have quite a lot of Chinese in it that I can go through to practise reading.

2-part Mamma Mia! programme

It was a really nice evening and we'll keep checking to see if they put on something similar. They will be showing Chicago in January but I think we'll unfortunately miss it as we'll be away for new year. Hopefully we'll get to go another time this year though!