Mamma Mia! Dancing in the Streep

MERYL STREEP, an actress best known for her serious roles. Roles in films like Out Of Africa, so it's really quite hard to imagine her as a flamboyant Lycra-clad blonde, belting out Super Trouper and other camp Abba classics.

But this is exactly the surprising transformation the two-time Oscar-winner has undergone for one of this summer's brightest block-busters – the film adaptation of the hit musical Mamma Mia!

But then while Streep might project a demure air, a certain sense of mischiev-ousness is never far from the surface, one reason she is keen to dispel the idea that she's out of place in musicals.

"I've done a lot of musicals in my life. My first Broadway show was a musical and then I'd done a lot of musicals in high school, so it was like coming home to a thing that I always loved doing," she smiles.

"I haven't done many because I haven't done much stage, even though I wanted to, in a long time. And people are afraid to make musicals into movies."

Mamma Mia! could just change all that. Streep heads an impressive cast-list as Donna, a hippy mum running a guest house on a Greek island, whose only daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married.

Unknown to Donna, Sophie has pinched her mum's diary from the year she was born and has invited her three potential fathers (played by Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) to her wedding, although her mum hasn't seen them in 20 years.

Cue much mayhem in the sweltering heat as Sophie tries to work out which man is her dad and Donna tries to chase them off the island – all set to various Abba hits.

One of the funniest and most surreal moments comes during Sophie's hen party, when Donna and her best friends (played by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) squeeze back into their platform boots and colourful flares to perform one more time as 1970s band Donna And The Dynamos.

Streep, who recently turned 59 but doesn't look anywhere near it, actually fell in love with Mamma Mia! long before she was singled out as the 'ideal' actress to play Donna, after watching it on Broadway in 2001.

"I took my 10-year-old and her birthday party right after it had opened. It was right after September 11 and everyone was feeling really low and I thought, 'What am I going to do with all these kids?'," she explains.

"I saw an ad in the New York Times and it said 'new British musical' and something about 'buoyant fun' and I thought, 'Boy. I'm there'.

"I took the kids and we were all just dancing in the aisles and down the street. I bought the cast album and sang the songs for two years.

"And I wrote a note to the cast to basically say, 'Thank you for the music' and thank you for the injection of joy that was so needful at that moment."

The actress, who has four children with her husband of almost 30 years Don Gummer, admits she was apprehensive about her now grown-up offspring seeing their mum in psychedelic 1970s gear for some of the big retro dance numbers.

"I was nervous, but then I showed them all the stills and they've already had their mortification moment about me wearing spandex.

"We have to get over this," she says with a laugh. "I can't wait for them to see it. It's as if we've all done it for our daughters.

"My son will be appalled, but I think he'll actually like it because he's a musician and he'll get a kick out of it.

"He appreciates music and this music is much trickier and more precise than I thought when I first sang along to the radio.

"I got all the lyrics wrong and some of the pitches, so working on it made me appreciate it so much more."

The cast certainly had to work hard to get all the songs – and dance moves – perfect. Initial filming took place on the 007 stage at London's Pinewood studios, where a mock-up of Donna's Greek village was built, before they transferred to the Greek islands.

"Voulez Vous goes by like this in the movie," says Streep, snapping her fingers, "but it was so hard to get those steps right.

"We worked on it three weeks before we began shooting. It was everybody's bete noire – well, it was for all the non-dancing actors, which is to say all the actors."

At this point she spontaneously breaks into a rendition of the catchy tune, whilst swinging her arms and breathing heavily to show how strenuous it was.

"It goes so fast and there's 150 people on set and it's the only number where everyone's dancing at once – the whole cast and every dancer in London I think.

"It was really scary fast, they played those disco lights eight hours a day and the migraine set in, but we couldn't wait to get there in the morning and do it again cause it was so fun."

As well as the big numbers Donna sings with the cast, Streep also sings a duet – SOS – with Pierce Brosnan and then sings The Winner Takes It All to him just before Sophie's wedding.

She recalls, "I've sung all of these songs about 70,000 times from starting in my closet, which was the only place my family would allow me to practise, all the way to Pinewood and the place in Holland Park, London, where we were living. Those poor neighbours.

"But I never got sick of singing the songs. Never, never, never. In my drama school, they used to use Abba to rev everybody up for dance class, because you just can't not be excited when it starts.

"They were very generous with letting us own the songs, as long as we were exact on the words and the timing," she adds.

"There are so many great songs, but it wasn't hard work, it was a joy to sing this."

After nine weeks at Pinewood, the cast headed to Greece to film on location on the islands of Skiathos and Skopelos.

Streep found the transition from studio to location wasn't too hard in terms of filming, but admits, "Greece was nicer."

However, it was the lengthy Pinewood shoot that helped the cast bond.

"People who are in plays get to have that experience, whereas for most movies people fly in, do their bit and fly out.

"But because we were incarcerated in that barn, trying to learn Voulez Vous for three weeks before shooting started, that's all we talked about.

"Colin was so worried, Stellan was beside himself and Pierce was drenched in sweat everyday, but we all bonded over it. We were a company and we lived together.

"But they saved the best part of it to the end, when we went to Greece and they put us up in the most beautiful places."


Abba are still blockbusters
Mamma Mia! (PG) *****
If last year's film version of Hairspray put a spring in your step, then dust off your dancing shoes - Mamma Mia! is a delight.

Director Phyllida Lloyd and writer Catherine Johnson, who masterminded the smash hit stage version of the all-singing all-dancing musical, work their magic here too with an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.

From the opening strains of I Have A Dream to the full-cast rendition of Waterloo in glittery catsuits and platform boots, this rollicking romance set to the ABBA songbook is 108 minutes of pure, undiluted joy.

It's so much fun, Mamma Mia! should be prescribed on the NHS.

You'll leave the cinema elated - and perhaps a little tearful after Streep's heart-breaking solo on Winner Takes It All - and it doesn't matter a jot that most of the male cast can't hold a melody.

Indeed, it adds to the film's boundless charm as the cast throw themselves with unrestrained gusto into each brilliantly choreo-graphed number, including impressive mid-air splits from Streep as she bounces on a bed singing the anthemic Dancing Queen with co-stars Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, the latter scene-stealing with her comic exploits.

The Greek islands of Skiathos and Skopelos provide a breath-taking backdrop to the fun and games, with crystal blue waters where Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper frolic for their duet, Lay All Your Love On Me.

You'll wish you were here.

Sophie (Seyfried) is poised to marry her hunky fiance Sky (Cooper) on an idyllic island where her mother Donna (Streep) runs a decrepit taverna.

Unfortunately, the blushing bride-to-be has no one to give her away because Donna refuses to reveal the identity of Sophie's father.

So Sophie invites the three old flames who could be her old man - divorced architect Sam (Brosnan), intrepid travel writer and explorer Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and steadfast banker Harry (Firth) - in the hope that one of them will be able to walk her down the aisle.

Their sudden arrival throws Donna into an emotional whirl, leaving ballsy childhood mates Tanya (Baranski) and Rosie (Walters) to pick up the pieces.

Mamma Mia! skips merrily through ABBA's greatest hits, including Gimme Gimme Gimme, Super Trooper and Take A Chance On Me.

Sadly, Screenwriter Johnson excises a number of songs (Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Name Of The Game and One Of Us) for the stage show to keep the running time trim, consigning Thank You For The Music to the end credits.

Streep is marvellous as a mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Brosnan, Firth and Skarsgard embrace their roles without restraint, having as much fun making the film as we do watching it.

Their infectious energy reaches a giddy high when we're encouraged to sing and dance like lunatics in the aisles to an uproarious reprise of Dancing Queen.

Resistance is futile.

• Mamma Mia! The Movie is showing in cinemas across the Capital