Abba in China

A Mandarin Mamma Mia! brings Broadway to Shanghai.

If there is such a thing as global culture, Mamma Mia! must be it. The songs are classics of the lingua franca of pop, familiar from Bujumbura to Beijing, and proof that even those who do not speak English can still spell Abba.

Now Mamma Mia! has arrived in China – the first time that a Broadway-quality western musical has been performed in the language of the world's most populous nation. Classics such as "Money, Money, Money" are sung entirely in Chinese (apart from the word "money", which apparently needs no translation). A Chinese cast sings songs in Chinese in a show staged by a Chinese production company that is the commercial arm of the Ministry of Culture. It is a peculiar – and in some ways uncomfortable – fusion of east and west, but one that has been greeted rapturously by audiences in Beijing and Shanghai. Next month the production moves to Guangzhou, before returning to Shanghai on Christmas Eve.

Beijing hopes that the show – which is being staged under licence from original producers Littlestar, and is under their artistic control – will spark the creation of an indigenous musical theatre industry in China. Chinese producers United Asia Live Entertainment Co (UALE) say that box-office revenues so far stand at RMB26m (£2.58m, $4.06m), while it cost RMB70m to produce.

But the show has a bigger purpose than profit: it is part of a much larger drive towards a new Chinese creativity. Beijing wants China to move from faking things to making them – from counterfeiting CDs to creating homegrown stage shows. The eventual goal is to produce Chinese musicals based on Chinese stories to export around the world – and help China replace widgets in the trade balance.

Of course it is likely to be a long time before the west is humming tunes from Raise the Red Lantern: The Musical. Western musical theatre is an alien art form in China. Probably the closest thing is Beijing opera – but it is hard to see much similarity between the stylised, quintessentially Asian musicality of traditional Chinese opera and the rambunctious melodiousness of the average western musical. Translating Mamma Mia! into Mandarin is meant to start the long process of bridging that gap.

This production takes just a baby step across the divide. Apart from the words, everything about it is western: the costumes, the body language, the gestures. The show's three middle-aged divas – Donna, Tanya and Rosie – wear neon Lycra and bellbottoms; the younger Chinese cast members bump bottoms in greeting (in a way that would never pass muster offstage). Plug your ears and this could be Broadway.

The story, too, could hardly be more western. The heroine, Donna (played by Meryl Streep in the movie), has had sex with three men and does not know which one fathered her daughter. When her daughter gets married and invites all three potential fathers to the wedding the result is a classically western comedy of errors. The backdrop of the story is the sexual revolution of the 1960s, in which Donna enthusiastically participated. Her Chinese contemporaries were going through a spot of upheaval then too – but it did not involve quite as much free love, and certainly a lot less laughter.

It may seem odd to choose such a foreign story to promote the localisation of stage musicals in China, but Tian Yuan, president of UALE, thinks it is an obvious choice: "In a relatively short period, Mamma Mia! has become the world's number one hit musical with the largest audiences and the most language versions around the globe," she says. In that respect, it is like a Fendi handbag: a famous name, in the land where brand is king.

David Lightbody, British executive producer of the Mandarin version for Littlestar, says the brand needs to be translated into the vernacular to have maximum impact – and crucially, to generate the commercial success on which a sustainable musical theatre industry in China must be based. "It's a commercial decision to use the local language," he says.

English productions of Cats, Les Misérables and other global hit musicals have done short mainland tours in recent years. But to succeed in China, musicals must make money – and to make money, they must run for years, says Lightbody. "How do you get a show to run for years in the local market?" he asks. "You do it in the local language."

That may sound obvious, but many Shanghai theatregoers do not agree. On a sultry evening in August, Zhang Yuwei, who works in sales in Shanghai, donned a chiffon shirt and hotpants to attend one of the first performances of the show in Mandarin. But she wishes it had been in English. "Even though Chinese is my mother tongue, I would rather see it in English," she commented during the interval. "I know it's been performed all over the world and it is sort of 'globalised', but there is still a cultural gap," she said, adding, "I have the sense that there is something missing."

Zhang speaks for many Chinese when she questions the logic of performing it in the vernacular. Mandarin is a tonal language, where changes in pitch can deliver radically different meanings: "English can be sung fast and understood, but Chinese cannot," says Zhang.

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