Campness the name of the game

The stars of Mamma Mia! are busy working on the tans required for the Greek island setting of the new £3 million West-End musical. Indeed, the cast are spritzing their way through so much of the fake stuff that the production team has had to set up a special discount deal with Lancome. Unfortunately, not everyone has quite mastered the art. Andrew Langtree - the ex-rugby-playing Romeo in this romantic comedy - has bright orange palms at the moment. "The bottle says 'rinse hands after use' but it should read 'scrub hands with a nail-brush'," says Louise Plowright, who has also been dousing herself daily in preparation for her part as a vampy jet-setting playgirl. Latex rubber gloves are the only solution from now on.

Not all the glitches facing director Phyllida Lloyd and her company in the run-up to opening night on 6 April at the Prince Edward Theatre are purely cosmetic: they are still fine-tuning the script and the arrangement of the 24 featured Abba numbers. The audience at the first preview on Tuesday loved it anyway, roaring with laughter and bursting into applause as each song started, humming along to old favourites like Dancing Queen, providing the "aha"s during Knowing Me, Knowing You, then jumping to their feet to cheer at the end.

Among them was Bjorn Ulvaeus, who has sat in on rehearsals every day since January. "I'm totally relieved now, totally happy," he said, relaxing backstage afterwards with a cigarette and glass of wine. "I have stuck my neck out so far that if this did not work with the warmth and humour I had expected, I would have been devastated."

Although Mamma Mia! is not a tribute musical, the 24 vintage Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson tunes provide Mamma Mia! with the strongest score in the West End (provided you are a fan of the Swedish supergroup's pure pop).

The diehard Abba addicts are already homing in. "We have had lots of people wearing Voulez-Vous jackets at the stage door," says producer Judy Craymer. Around the songs, playwright Catherine Johnson has woven an unashamedly upbeat, feel-good story about a funky, fortysomething, single mum, whose idyllic life on a Greek island is disrupted on the eve of her daughter's wedding by the arrival of three former lovers - any of whom could be the bride-to-be's father.

Lloyd stages it in a fun, frothy style that stops just the right side of panto naffdom: the cast performs Lay All Your Love On Me wearing life-jackets, snorkels, masks and fins, complete with attempts at high kicks. "No one is pretending to make a serious, epic musical here," admits Craymer. "There's a tongue-in-cheek campness about it that is part of the charm we want to retain."

The stage costumes are certainly surprisingly tasteful, given the fashion crimes Bjorn, Benny, Frida and Agnetha committed back in the Seven-ties. Even so, there is still much tweaking in the wardrobe department. "I have to wear three different pairs of knickers and four different bras, but we are trying to get it down to just one," says Siobhan McCarthy, who plays mum Donna (imagine a test-tube experiment involving Edina from Ab Fab and Shirley Valentine).

Her biggest problem is the white Lycra catsuits she, Plowright and Jenny Galloway don when they re-form their Seventies girl-group, The Dynamos, to sing at daughter Sophie's hen party. "Meals after the show, packets of crisps and Dunkin' Donuts are all off," she sighs. "When my husband took some photos of me and I saw my stomach, I started doing exercises." Other members of the cast have possibly suffered worse tortures. Nigel Harman, who plays beach-bum Eddie, has been learning to play the bagpipes for a stag-night scene. "I don't think he has found it very easy," says manager Julian Stoneman diplomatically. At least he is not also having to struggle with designer Mark Thompson's notights rule. "We are permanently shaving, exfoliating and doing our bikini lines," moans Plowright, who turns Does Your Mother Know into a sassy put-down number to a would-be toy-boy lover.

Hilton McCrae, who plays one of the possible "Dads", has been filling in lost Abba-listening years by studying the band's videos. "They are terribly funny," he says. "Just full of close-ups of teeth and mouths." McCrae, whose CV suggests he is at heart an RSC, Ibsen and Steven Berkoff kind of guy, thought hard before taking the part of Sam. "I would love to do Chekhov," he sighs. He hates not being able to improvise in big musicals. "When you are not speaking, they turn your mike off," he says. "You have to get authority to do an ad lib. It's f***king unbearable."

He is also wondering what reaction he will get from his wife Lindsay Duncan when she finishes her four-month New York run in Pinter's Ashes to Ashes. "All her worst nightmares might come horribly true, but I'm not worried about my credibility; I have no credibility. I'm up for anything, me." Spoken like a real super-trouper.