My god. Who knew? I thought I hated Mamma Mia. The last time Mamma Mia was in Seattle, 11 months ago, on the 20th anniversary of the national tour, I wrote that, by the end of act two, "I was ready to drown the mom, the daughter, the three guys who might be the dad, the set designer, and whoever wrote the book in the Aegean Sea."

But the absolutely fantastic production of Mamma Mia! at 5th Avenue Theatre right now proves that this show can be done well. My date on opening night last week was a friend who enjoys hating things as much as I do, and she loved it, too. No one was more surprised than we were.*

The first thing you notice is the scenic design by Jason Sherwood. If you've seen Mamma Mia onstage before, Sherwood's set looks nothing like you remember. As someone who works at the 5th Avenue confided about the national tour's set: "It was tired out. You could tell it had been around for a long time."

The reimagined set at the 5th Avenue involves 2,400 square feet of layered voile and gauze built into a concave shape that wraps around the action.

"Historically, the show's been represented with the iconic white stone and stucco Greek buildings and pathways," scenic designer Jason Sherwood explains in this video, discussing his process of reimagining the set with director Bill Berry.

"Having visited some Greek islands myself, I was excited about the idea of creating a huge vista of water, a sense of sky and water immediately blending into each other, and then an island sitting in the center of it. So Bill Berry and I began going after that idea. That the play itself would take place on a floating island on the stage surrounded by what would feel like an enormous panoramic vista of gorgeous Greek sky and water."

For the last 20 years, the national tour has had a stranglehold on how the show is seen, 5th Avenue publicist Rachel Liuzzi explained. "The tour would not give the rights to anyone else because they didn't want there to be competition at a regional theater for the tour. And what the rights holders want now is for new productions to not be copies of the tour. So they put a big emphasis on the producers creating something that is new visually. Obviously the story and music is going to remain the same. But they don't want it to look anything like what the tour looked like. So that, for us, as producers, was really exciting. And when you have a scenic designer like Jason Sherwood, the possibilities are limitless."

When you first walk in, the curtain is already up and you see this:

Then during the overture, that miniature island sinks down into the center of the stage—the first of several exits using a central trap door. Sometimes characters even enter up through the floor, which is what's happening in this shot here:

Obviously, the set would not matter if the performances were so-so, but these are not so-so performances. With the exception of one supporting actor, these are brilliant performances.

Kendra Kassebaum has the unenviable role of Donna, the stressed-out mom trying to plan a wedding while running a hotel. Meryl Streep plays the part in the movie as neurotic and exhausted. But Kassebaum does something different. She makes the part a little weird, a little idiosyncratic. A 5th Avenue veteran whose talents seem to know no limits, Kassebaum was also in the 5th's productions of Ragtime, Assassins, Company, and ELF, and she was Glinda in the first national tour of Wicked. She knows what she's doing. She's un-look-away-from-able.

There are so many moments where Donna is just standing there, singing an ABBA song. But Kassebaum doesn't just stand there. She does something unexpected with her face, or with the phrasing, or with her body. At one point she was on all fours growling like a feral animal, and I was rolling in the aisle. Here's a photo of her looking deceptively normal:

Other 5th Avenue veterans Lisa Estridge and Sarah Rudinoff turn in fantastic performances as Donna's best friends. And Eliza Palasz makes her 5th Avenue debut as Sophie, bringing warmth, presence, and vocal chops to what's usually a forgettable role. The one weak link is Paolo Montalban as one of the three men who might be Sophie's father (the Pierce Brosnan character in the movie). Montalban's acting is hopelessly wooden; he seems to have fewer tools in his toolkit than his scene partners like Kassebaum.

But the show is such a smashing success overall, one weak supporting performance doesn't matter.

Whatever you do: stay through the end of the curtain call. If you bolt from your seat the moment you see the first group of people take their bows, you are going to miss the best surprise of the show.

Mamma Mia plays at the 5th Avenue Theatre through February 25.

* Full disclosure: A friend of mine plays a supporting role in this production. That probably takes any professional credibility out of my opinion here. So be it. I planned on not writing about this production at all because of that friend, but my attempts to get someone else in the editorial department of The Stranger interested in seeing/reviewing the show have failed, probably because of that damn national tour and its reputation. And yet you need to know how good this production is, so here we are. This is purely anecdotal, but I overheard many, many people in the crowd—including people who said they'd seen the show many times before—expressing surprise at the quality of this production.