Monique Lund owns a grand total of one ABBA CD. ABBA Gold, she says, and swears she bought it before she was cast in the lead role of the national tour of Mamma Mia!

IF YOU GO

What: Mamma Mia!     When: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday through June 2     Where: Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Cincinnati, Aronoff Center for the Arts Procter & Gamble Hall     Tickets: $45-$65. 241-7469

        Ms. Lund plays the feisty, fortysomething mother of the bride who, on the eve of the Greek isle wedding, discovers her daughter has invited the three men who are potentially her father to the nuptials.

        “What can I say?” Ms. Lund says, laughing, about her character's dilemma (which of course has a happy ending by final curtain). “It was the '70s.”

        Ms. Lund was bitten by the theater bug as a child in her native Prince Edward Island when she was cast in the musical Anne of Green Gables, set on Prince Edward Island.

        She's not sure whether those early experiences or “prancing around lip-synching” to ABBA as a teen “and the Grease soundtrack” fueled her interest in a stage career.

        Until the Mamma Mia! tour, Ms. Lund worked most in Canada, including three years at the Stratford Festival and lots of musical long-runs in Toronto.

        She does get to sing her favorite ABBA song, “Money, Money, Money” in the show but notes “They're all great songs. Joyful.” Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, whom she met on the tour's opening night, “are great songwriters.

        “When you deconstruct these songs for the musical stage, to create orchestrations and harmonies for a full musical cast, you can see there's a lot of layering.”

        More and more big musicals are being fashioned to the tastes of aging baby boomers who grew up on rock. The Who's Tommy was followed by screen-to-stage musicals like Saturday Night Fever and Footloose.

        Can there be a Rolling Stones musical on the horizon? Ms. Lund laughs that if the decision were hers, the next greatest hits rock musical would be by the Police.

Black composers' music finds home in repertoire
CDs highlight rich legacy of music
Music sampler
Orchestras grapple with special programs vs. integration
Generations jam Jammin' on Main
Curators keep own collections
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
KENDRICK: Alive and well
No clowning around when couple marries
DEMALINE: The arts
Famous stage moms receive little love
Flatley takes on new 'Lord' role
Herrmann's works reflect precisionist era
KIESEWETTER: Television
'Mamma Mia's mama likes ABBA life
'Monologues back in town
Entertaining no sweat for Musiq
MARTIN: Foodstuff
Pickles play pertinent part on plate
Serve it this week: Mint
Get to it