My wife and I visited the Theatre Royal for a matinee performance of the breathtaking Mamma Mia stage musical this week and even though we knew the story line and the wonderful song scores off by heart we were still completely swept off our feet by this new provincial touring company production.

The two-and-a-half hours spent last Wednesday in the lovely theatre was way beyond our already high expectations. The levels of enjoyment embracing those wonderful Abba music scores (with superb live orchestral support throughout), laughter, pathos, cleverly stylish stage sets and magical individual high quality performance levels were, for us, quite unprecedented and that includes us having seen the original production in the West End nine years ago. If you are not one of the 38,000 advance bookings for this then waste not another minute before acquiring what will surely become the hottest ticket in town.