Mamma Mia! (the musical) in Manila

-
Tickets to Mamma Mia! (the musical) are perfect gifts on Mothers' Day! If you're going to watch it, I suggest that you bring your Mom with you, especially if your Mom is a baby boomer. In my case, the international tour stopped over in Manila in February, so I didn't see it with my Mom. I did see it with my aunt, though. The full-house during the afternoon show just proved that not only my Mom's generation loved ABBA's songs; the yuppies found them (and the story) appealing too.

It's a nice show to watch when bonding with Mom because at its core, the story of Mamma Mia! is about the relationship between a mother and a daughter and the daughter's search for her father. When my aunt was explaining the gist to me before we watched the show, I thought that the spotlight was on the daughter. However, as I was watching the play, I noticed that the daughter drives the story forward but the story really centers around her Mom and the three potential dads.

What sold me to the idea of watching the musical was the soundtrack. The play features some of ABBA's well-known songs that I actually grew up listening to! And here we go...

I remember how irritated my sister felt when my parents refer to her as their "Chiquitita" (we didn't know then that it's a rough Spanish translation for "little girl").

I used to learn ballroom dancing steps for Phys. Ed. class to the tune of "Dancing Queen". I just can't remember if I was learning the swing or the cha-cha. More recently, that's the song that my supervisor sang in IRRI Duets!

"Take a Chance on Me" is the most memorable song in an old ABBA cassette tape I have at home just because I like the rhythm. I used to play that cassette tape lots of times. When the Philippines had a lot of electricity interruptions, I played the tape in a Sony Walkman that my parents gave me on my eighth birthday. My brother and my sister also took turns listening.

Mamma Mia! is performed at the CCP until February 19. If you've got the chance, watch it and take a trip down memory lane through the songs. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more