'Mamma'...and Dad: Actor takes wife and child on the road for real adventure
By Bruce R. Miller Sioux City Journal staff writer
If you think it's something to haul eight trucks worth of sets, lights and costumes around the country, try toting a baby.
"Our car is filled with toys and books," says actor Milo Shandel. "He's the focus."
On the road with "Mamma Mia!" for the last five years, Shandel and his wife, Christine Oddy, have been road warriors since Hagan was born last January.
While most of the company travels in planes and buses, the Shandels drive, searching for hotels that have rooms with kitchens.
"That's key," says Shandel, who plays Bill Austin, one of the lead character's suitors. "If we can make our own meals, it seems more like home."
Christmas? "You go to Walgreen's, get your decorations -- a three foot tree with fiber optic lights -- and you get in the mood." Add in visiting relatives and the season is set.
Better yet? "Members of the company treat him like the bell of the ball," Shandel says. "He's got a lot of aunts and uncles."
Touring is nothing new for Shandel or Oddy. She, too, appeared in "Mamma Mia!" (the Toronto company) and knew the rigors of road show business.
Both realized, though, that separation wasn't necessarily the best thing for Hagan. "She decided to leave her show and come on the road with me," Shandel says. "It's really worked out quite well. Hagan's got both his parents and I work when he's asleep."
When Hagan rises in the morning, dad does, too. Mom sleeps in "for another half hour" and the three get to spend plenty of time together during the day. "When he goes for a nap in the afternoon, I go with him," Shandel says. "If it weren't for those naps, I don't know how I'd be able to do the show."
Books and toys aside, the three lead rather spartan lives. "We each have two outfits and two weeks worth of undergarments," Shandel says. "The key is to reduce what you've got. We've discovered that you don't really need that much."
Before he was married, Shandel found he was "aquiring" too much stuff while on the road. "I convinced myself I absolutely needed it. I was wrong."
Because this touring company stays in cities for more than a day or two (it'll be in Sioux City for the better part of a week), cast members get ample time to explore. On the first national tour, Shandel says, "we stayed two or three months in a city and I got to see a lot of places like San Francisco and Philadelphia. Our cast and crew got to know the golf courses quite well."
Starring in an upbeat musical helps lighten the mood immensely.
While "Mamma Mia!" wasn't a huge critical success when it opened, audiences took to it immediately, embracing the songs from ABBA that form its core.
"The same people who dismissed the show said 'Lennon' (a flop musical) was a work of genius," Shandel says. "It's quite an unassuming show. It really doesn't take itself seriously. I don't want to say it's frothy, but it's very buoyant...audiences love that type of show."
Built around ABBA's hits, "Mamma Mia!" tells the story of a young woman searching for her birth father before she marries. Shandel plays one of the men most likely. He's an Australian along the lines of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin.
The character gets big laughs when he's onstage -- even during the days surrounding Irwin's death.
"When he died, my first thought was, 'Oh, god...what am I going to do,'" Shandel says. "Maybe subconciously I dialed it down a bit and I softened the accent. But what you realize is audiences really love that guy. He was so great...and he did such amazing things for animal conservation. Now, it seems like a tribute to him...but I was conscious of it for a few days."
Although he's a "Mamma Mia!" veteran, Shandel says the show stays fresh because there are always new cast members joining the company, different audiences to enjoy the show. "My performance depends on who I'm doing a scene with...and that can change. I pay attention to what's going on on stage and I can honestly say I still love doing it."
Even with those songs.
"I think the reason those songs have been so successful is because English was a second language for the writers," Shandal says. "As a result, they wrote more unversal themes. That's why the show works so well in so many different countries."
Now in its eighth year (it opened in London in 1999), "Mamma Mia!" has productions in all parts of the world. It's a hit just about everywhere and shows no signs of stopping. Shandel has reupped through 2008 -- proof, he says, that life on the road does work for his family.
"We're even considering having another child," he says. "My wife went home a couple of time and found that I could be more help to her on the road than anyone else could if she stayed at home."
Sometimes, life on the road just takes a little ingenuity. Hagan's pediatrician visits, for example, have been handled by physicians all over the country. All mom and dad have to do is make sure they have photocopies of his records.
"This life isn't for everybody," Shandel, 37, admits. "But given the circumstances, it's working out great. The proof is in the pudding -- our little guy is quite advanced. He's already walking and putting words together. He's also really social."
In time, dad says, they'll stay put. "But being in 'Mamma Mia!' is wonderful. We figure life just doesn't get much better."
Mamma Mia's Shandel has two families |
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| By DON FOWLER Cranston Online |
| Thu, Sep 21 2006 |
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Milo Shandel plays the Australian travel writer who can’t make a commitment in Broadway’s biggest blockbuster, Mamma Mia!, coming to the Providence Performing Arts Center Sept. 19-24.
In real life, Shandel has made two major commitments: one to the show, and the other to his family. Shandel travels with his actress wife and 7½-month-old son from city to city on the musical’s whirlwind tour. I caught up with him in Baltimore, where the fledgling family had just toured the Inner Harbor.
“My son loved the boats and wanted to stop and pet every dog,” Milo (pronounced me-low) said. “It’s like that in every city. We get out and walk, and enjoy every place we visit.”
Shandel was in Providence for the last Mamma Mia tour and remembers fondly the restaurants on Federal Hill and the tremendous growth of the city. Wait until he sees it now.
“You know that the original tour began in Providence,” he reminded me. “There were actually two months of tech work and run-throughs on the PPAC stage. There are only a few people from the original [show] left in the cast.”
Shandel has been with the show for 4½ and still loves it.
“I enjoyed spending two or three months in the bigger cities, where we could settle down for a while,” he said.
The Canadian actor, born in Vancouver and now living in Toronto when he’s not on the road, has established a new lifestyle.
“My wife and I are from Vancouver,” he said. “We lived about five blocks apart, but never met until we both attended acting school in Toronto. She’s a real ABBA fan, and we both ended up in the show. Unfortunately, she was doing it in Toronto and I was traipsing around the USA.”
Milo loved his theatre family but missed his real family, especially when their son was born. What to do? Why, take him on the road, of course. Milo would often drive from city to city, while wife and son took the plane.
The current run from Baltimore to Hartford to Providence is a short enough trip for them to drive together. The difficulties occur when the tour takes them 700 miles west and then 700 miles back east.
“I couldn’t do this without having my family with me. We’re just experiencing one long, extended road trip,” he said. “We love doing outdoor things. Grabbing the back- pack and going for hikes. We were just in Huntsville, Alabama and found this wonderful park in the mountains, just a few miles out of the city. [I suggested Cliff Walk to him].”
“The real change for me is getting up early in the morning,” Milo said. “Actors traditionally sleep late. Now I’m up at 6:30 a.m. instead of 11 a.m.”
But Milo Shandel says that it is all worth it. There aren’t many actors who can succeed on the road and still have the luxury of being with their family and watching their children grow every day.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” he said.
Mamma Mia! will open the fall season at the Providence Performing Arts Center Sept. 19-24. If you like the music of ABBA (Who doesn’t?) and enjoy a good musical (Who doesn’t?), this is the show to see. It will be our third time, and I can’t wait.
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ABBA-dabba-do
By Colin MacLean -- Edmonton Sun
Milo Shandel spent his teen years in Vancouver listening to punk and new wave music. He remembers his cousin summing up their feelings by wearing the classic T-shirt of the time which read, "Disco Sucks.''
ABBA was just a distant noise that sometimes intruded from the radio.
But a personal brush with ABBA changed his attitude toward the '70s supergroup.
Shandel and his wife had just moved to Toronto 10 years ago and they were spending their first Christmas on their own.
"We were both a little sad,'' he remembers on the phone from Regina where Mamma Mia!, the musical based on the songs of ABBA, had set up last week. "So I bought her ABBA Gold. She had spent her childhood roller skating to ABBA in her basement in her satin shorts. I thought the gift would make her happy. We put it on and listened all Christmas Day and it totally lifted our spirits. They swooped in like Swedish superheroes and saved Christmas.''
I think it's probably safe to say that Mamma Mia! is the most popular musical in the world today. It opened in London in 1999 and immediately charmed reviewers and audiences. It first tested the waters of North America in Toronto and then moved to New York in 2002 where it collected five Tony Award nominations - including one for best musical.
At the moment, there are 11 productions running concurrently around the world. Mamma Mia is the first major production in our newly refurbished Jubilee Auditorium. It begins a 13-day run on Tuesday.
For those who may have had their memory of those years permanently warped by Led Zeppelin and Nazareth, ABBA exploded onto the scene in 1974 when Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad won the Eurovision Song Contest with a tune called Waterloo.
The song topped charts around the world. The next eight years saw a stream of singles, platinum albums and soldout concerts worldwide. The group very publicly came apart in 1982 but their music continues to endure.
A couple of year back they were offered a guaranteed billion dollars (!) for a comeback tour.
They declined.
Mamma Mia! is a "juke box'' musical - that is a work artificially constructed from pop songs. The songs come first - a process completely backward from the usual way of these things.
But English producer Judy Craymer loved ABBA's music and persuaded band members Ulvaeus and Andersson of the possibility of creating a musical using their oeuvre.
"I just saw it as a big experiment,'' Ulvaeus told the New York Daily News in 2001. "The challenge was whether this could actually be done - to have a catalogue of songs and then rummage through it to get something coherent out of it.''
The producers turned to a "serious'' playwright - Catherine Johnson. It took Johnson two years but, borrowing liberally from a 1968 Gina Lollobrigida film, Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell, came up with a story line that would accommodate some 22 of ABBA's greatest hits. The list includes Dancing Queen, Money Money Money, Take a Chance on Me and many more. (Except, for some reason, their big North American hit, Fernando.)
"They have an amazing ability to fit into a dramatic context,'' enthuses Shandel. "Benny and Bjorn were geniuses, not only musically, but lyrically as well. I think because English was their second language they were able to write lyrics that are universal. Even when they were breaking up, they wrote some very heartbreaking lyrics and of course, those songs are in the show. Songs like The Winner Takes it All and Slipping Through My Fingers.
Amazingly, no lyrics to the songs were changed. I took in Mamma Mia! in London a month ago and noted little gasps from the audience at how ingeniously their favourite ABBA tunes fitted into the dramatic context. "Yeah,'' agrees Shandel. "Often they start giggling because they can't believe there's where they put that song.''
Many of the reviews of Mamma Mia! begin the same way, with "I hate disco music'' or "I can't stand the '70s.'' But even the mighty New York Times was melted by this sunny, upbeat vehicle observing, "It may be the unlikeliest hit ever to win over cynical, sentiment-shy New Yorkers.''
Shandel plays one of the three blokes who might be the father of the musical's young heroine. Or not. Apparently 20 years before the musical opens, the three visited the Greek Island where mom hung out and each had a dalliance with the lady. Mom is not quite sure which is the father but her daughter wants one of them to walk her down the aisle for her own imminent marriage.
The Toronto-based actor has been with the show now for three years. "Name any town and city in the States and I'll bet we played there - from the big ones like Chicago, L.A. or Boston right down to Springfield, Illinois, or Raleigh, North Carolina. Audiences can react differently in different cities but no matter where we've played audiences have embraced the show and had a good time.''
Or in the words of ABBA, "My, my how can I resist you?''
Popping back
Hit show 'Mamma Mia!' returns to Sacramento
By Marcus Crowder -- Bee Theater Critic
Mamma mia, here we go again. "Mamma Mia!" the musical based on songs by ABBA, returns to Sacramento this week, and its popularity remains as strong as ever. The production's Web site calls it "the world's Number 1 musical" and the international proliferation of "Mamma Mias!" - there are 11 productions now running around the globe - and all things ABBA makes the claim stand up.
So what exactly have Agnetha Faltskog, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the initials of their first names spelled out ABBA) wrought?
The Broadway production, which opened in October 2001, continues to sell strongly, with more than 1,675 performances and counting. The New York production also now charges $110 for a regular orchestra seat, which ties it with "Monty Python's Spamalot" and "Wicked" for the highest ticket price on Broadway.
But "Mamma Mia!" is a full-fledged international phenomenon that more than 20 million people have seen. Cast recordings are now available in five languages, in addition to the estimated 3,500 ABBA albums that are sold every day around the world.
In Las Vegas, "Mamma Mia! is now in its 32nd month, making it the longest-running Broadway musical ever on the Strip.
This particular jukebox musical - the term for a production based on an artist's catalog of songs - has overwhelmingly succeeded where others have fallen flat. Several other successful pop acts have been musicalized recently, no doubt hoping to catch the same wave that "Mamma Mia!" rides.
But "Good Vibrations" (the music of the Beach Boys) wiped out, and "All Shook Up" (the hits of Elvis) failed to rile up either critics or audiences. "Lennon" was just plain embarrassing. Only "Movin' Out," based on Billy Joel's songs with a story told through Twyla Tharp's choreography, has really worked or engaged audiences.
Musicals involve storytelling through songs, dance and spoken narrative. The percentages of each are different depending on the show and the orientations and interests of its creators. Music, naturally, is the base, and the Broadway stage has its own musical requirements that rock music may not necessarily fulfill.
That's one of the reasons why John Lennon's personal lyrics amid various rock music structures became easy-listening pablum in the Broadway arrangements of "Lennon." Since the music of ABBA wasn't really rock in the first place, its pure pop and dance-oriented smoothness made a seemless transition to the stage.
Milo Shandel, who's toured with "Mamma Mia!" for 3 1/2 years as the Australian Bill Austin, has a couple of theories about the show's appeal.
"Given that there's a built-in audience for the music, what I find people respond to most is the story, the story of the mother and the daughter," Shandel said from his hotel room in San Diego.
Writer Catherine Johnson's cuddly romantic comedy takes place on a Greek island, where on the eve of her wedding, a daughter has asked her mother to finally reveal the identity of her father. This brings three men from her mother's past back to the island where they were all together 20 years earlier.
"I find people are really touched by that story and I think that's really the secret success of 'Mamma Mia!' " Shandel said.
"It appeals to all generations, and everybody seems to enjoy it equally."
Shandel, who plays the potential Aussie dad in "Mamma Mia!," also believes the Swedish band's songs touch on universal themes.
"As opposed to writing about intensely personal subjects in an intensely personal way, I think they were writing about intensely personal things in a universal way," he said.
Shandel also thinks that because the Swedish songwriters were working in their second language, they used simplified, less-complex language and imagery.
"I'm not saying it was clichéd, but if they were writing in their own language perhaps it would have been a bit less accessible."
Shandel pointed out that as the performance proceeds audience reactions move through stages.
"As the story gets started, people are just sitting back wondering 'Where is this story going to take us?' Then there's that initial signal reaction when a character breaks into a song and it's one of 'those ABBA songs' that you grew up with the guilty pleasure of loving but you didn't want anyone to know you liked ABBA."
What the performers usually hear next from audiences is laughter, Shandel said.
"We hear these laughs from the audience and it can be in a very dramatic moment, a serious scene dealing with these characters' relationships. But as soon as you start singing 'Breaking up is never easy' ('Knowing Me, Knowing You'), you'll hear it."
Finally, Shandel said that there's a euphoric release when the show draws to a close.
"When all the ensemble are dancing up a storm and everyone's up on their feet, that's the catharsis of the show - when the audience gets to participate," he said.
"And that's how we send everybody off into the night. It's such a treat to be in a show that gets people going like that."
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Mamma Mia! cast are super troupers
| By Pat St. Germain, Winnipeg Sun |
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After logging more than three years on two productions of Mamma Mia!, you'd think actor Milo Shandel would be calling S.O.S. But the super trouper insists he never gets tired of going to the same Greek wedding day after day in the ABBA musical.
That's because no matter where the romantic comedy plays, he's guaranteed a happy ending every single night.
"It really ends on a really high note and because of that every time we end a show the audience is having the time of their lives and that affects how we feel," the Toronto-based Shandel says.
Opening at Centennial Concert Hall next Wednesday, the comedy set on a Greek island revolves around a young bride-to-be who goes behind her mother's back to invite three former beaus to her wedding, determined that one of them will be revealed as her father in time to give her away at the altar.
Shandel plays a travel writer who accepts the invitation, only to be blindsided by news he may be father of the bride. An understudy in his first tour with the show, Shandel says he auditioned for the original Toronto production but took another job before it was cast.
"I thought Mamma Mia! would be a flop," he says, adding "I don't bet on horses."
But it seems he was destined to take a chance on the musical. His wife Christine Oddy, was in productions in Toronto and Vancouver. Now a father-to-be in real life, he says Oddy, who is traveling with him on this tour, got him hooked on ABBA several years back. And when the couple spent their Christmas alone together in Toronto instead of going home to family in Vancouver, Shandel gave her the ABBA Gold album, and they played it all day to keep their spirits up.
"I like to say ABBA saved my Christmas."
Calling the music "pure pop perfection," Shandel says ABBA's Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus had never written down the harmonies for their songs until 1999, when they reworked songs to fit the Mamma Mia! story by Catherine Johnson. But he says harmonies from Take a Chance on Me, Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes it All and almost two dozen other songs are recreated note-for-note in the show.
And like every actor in every musical since the dawn of creation, Shandel says that show is fun for everyone, everywhere -- even the menfolk.
"What happens is a lot of guys come to the show because their girlfriends drag them to it ... and they end up loving it," he says.
"It's a story that's really from the heart, although it's not dealt with in a sappy way. It's been genetically engineered for your enjoyment."
We believe him, we really do. There's gotta be a reason this show, which includes a handful of Canucks on a mostly American cast, is one of more than a dozen productions still going strong worldwide.
Mamma Mia! is Shandel's third big show in Winnipeg, which happens to be his father's hometown. He also appeared in Cabaret and Six Degrees of Separation at Manitoba Theatre
Centre in the early '90s.
And, by the way, it's a union product, unlike several touring musicals that have stopped here in recent years.
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