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Mama Mia's Impressions with Ms. Thorpe

Cassandra Culp, Adelaide Liddiard

Mamma Mia has been Secord's ongoing production for around 3 years now. Mrs. Thorpe has had to re-build her cast and tweak the production accordingly to put on a perfect show for opening night and now that is over we wanted to hear her thoughts.



Cassandra - This musical has been in production for the past two years. Overall do you think the outcome of opening night and just the show was worth the wait?


Thorpe - Absolutely I think you've finally got an audience and that's what you do a show for right, is for the audiences. Yeah I was absolutely sad that the original cast didn't get to be a part of it because they put so much work into it but in the end, we're doing a show for the people and they got to see it and we got to do it, so yeah it was.


Adelaide - What was the most challenging part about bringing the script to life?


Thorpe - Other than the fact we had to shut down?


Cassandra - Yeah


Thorpe - I think jukebox musicals are hard because the songs aren't written for the plot and the characters. They're in existence and the plot and the characters are kind of made to fit those. So trying to create a world where they are real people having real lives and it's not just like an ABBA concert with people talking in between. I think that's always a challenge for us for sure.


Adelaide - If you could've done something different for the show, what would it have been? Like when you saw the final thing and it was too late to change anything would you have swapped anything or moved anything around?


Thorpe - No. It was the show we did. It was exactly the way. You know there's always like oh wow that one voice thing. But overall that is the show that we wanted to do. I think getting to do it the second time you actually do get to fix some things that didn't quite work the first time around. Because I already knew what I was doing and I knew where the glitches were by dress rehearsal, I had time to do that.


Cassandra - Was it what you envisioned when you decided that Mamma Mia was going to be the production you were gonna do?

Thorpe - Yeah, yeah absolutely I think the number that changed the most was ‘Does Your Mother Know’ and that was because of the people that we had and they were not dancers. Which is fine because it's a great number, but it just had to change. So you always try to direct and choreograph for the people you have. You need to bring it to life but we also need to work with the strength of the actors that you have. I remember saying to Jack ‘so what can you do?’ and he said ‘I can jump’ and that was basically where the number started. Because I had Milo and Andrea Yapp so I thought it's gonna be a bit more of a dance-off and trying to show off for her. Milo is a very different character, a very different actor and a very different type of Pepper. I love Milo’s Pepper and Jack's Pepper are very very different, but equally loveable and the number just had to change. It changed to something new and it was phenomenal and it took the strength of those kids.


Adelaide - Who was your favourite character to direct? That can be the first time around, or the second time around, who was your favourite character in general?


Thorpe - Donna. Hundred percent Donna. Both times. She gets to go through so much because she is strong and she's independent, she's a mom, but she's funny and goofy because she was a dynamo and she's like a hippie. Even though she's very grounded now and intelligent and thoughtful, she has to run a business and raise a child. She had this wild past and has all these cool aspects to her personally. Tonya is Tonya and that's Tonya. Donna gets like all of this. When we see her at first she's this person but she has all this other stuff that's part of her as well that comes out in numbers like ‘Dancing Queen’. She gets quite the journey. And just as a side note both actors were amazing to direct and were able to show all of those aspects. Very different Donna's but they were both just as amazing.


Cassandra - What was your favourite show that you've ever done?


Thorpe - The Drowsy Chaperone. Always just a great show. As everyone knows this isn’t my favourite show. I was coerced into doing it. and it was fine and the audiences loved it and that's why you do it, because you want audiences to be entertained and it's a show that everyone loves and it's a show that the kids loved and Mr. Staples loved. It may not have been my choice but that doesn't mean I hated it. It doesn’t mean that it wasn't a success, it was a great job of it. But in my heart my favourite show is ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ because that's a phenomenal show. It's just such a brilliantly written show, it’s such a funny show. The characters are incredible and the actors I had were incredible. You know what a bed that goes up in the wall with people on it, and a plane cmon, how could you not. That's always my favourite.


Adelaide - Is that why you always do this one as a unit for your musical theatre class?


Thorpe - I have a few times because it's a classic musical comedy and the gangsters are classic vaudevillian so it's it kind of gives me some of that musical history and yet in a fun way without having to go back and dust off really old musical you can play with that style even though it’s a modern musical.



Mamma Mia was an amazing success put on by the students and staff of Laura Secord. Obviously, there was a huge barrier in the musical due to the covid-19 lockdown, but that gave enough time and practice to make tweaks to the show that may not have been caught the first time around. In the end, the show was an amazing success that the audience, (including Mr.Staples) absolutely loved.


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