You're not singing any more ... the old, rubbish, subtitle-deficient Mamma Mia!
A while back when Mamma Mia! first opened at UK cinemas, theguardian.com/film sent a couple of work experience students down to Leicester Square to attend a showing. The two young ladies returned, battered and bruised from Abba overload, to report that the expected audience participation we had thought they might discover was something of a myth. There was no singing in the aisles going on at all, no dancing queens.
This was something of a surprise, because the stage version of Mamma Mia! is supposed to be something of a riot (if your idea of fun is hanging out with large numbers of tonally-challenged hen-do weekenders). Why weren't people getting involved?
"Luckily", the studio behind Mamma Mia!, Universal, has taken note of the "problem", and solved it. According to scientific study, the reason people were not singing along was found to be twofold:
1. They were not receiving enough encouragement (basically, they didn't know they were allowed to).
2. The words to all the songs were not being flashed up on the screens in brightly-coloured letters.
Having reached these astounding conclusions, Universal has now arranged a number of special "singalonga" screenings of the film, which will see the above limiting factors removed, resulting in a pure, unadulterated, unimpeded outbreak of Abba-based joy across the country.
All you have to do if you want to get involved in this unique experience, which is running from Friday onwards, is to carefully examine your local cinema listings. And possibly your capacity for terrible decision-making processes.
