Mamma Mia!

Mamma Mia! puts a bride-to-be on a small Greek island with her mother's twenty-year-old diary and a plan she has told nobody about. Sophie has read enough of it to narrow her father down to three men, so she has invited all three to her wedding and intends to work out which one he is before Saturday.

Her mother Donna, who runs a crumbling taverna and has spent two decades not discussing any of this, opens the door to three faces from her past on the same afternoon. Donna's old bandmates turn up for the wedding as well, one twice divorced and one married to her career, and the island fills with people who knew each other when they were young enough to be reckless about it.

The book is by Catherine Johnson, and the score is assembled entirely from songs written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. Rather than retell the group's own history, the show fits existing songs to an original plot, which is a harder trick than it looks. It reached the stage in 1999 and has been produced in dozens of countries since.

The songs carry the plot. "The Winner Takes It All" becomes a confrontation between two people who ended badly, "Slipping Through My Fingers" becomes a mother dressing her daughter on a wedding morning, and "Dancing Queen" becomes three women in middle age deciding they are not finished yet. The staging is bright, the pace is quick, and the second half runs largely on nerve.

Underneath the sunshine it is a story about a woman who raised a child alone and never explained why, and a daughter who wants an answer more than she wants a wedding. What she finds is not the answer she went looking for.