Kitra Wynn Coomer, Michelle Elizabeth Dawson, Susie McMonagle perform “Dancing Queen,” in Mamma Mia!

Joan Marcus

PROVIDENCE Camp’s in session; so’s spirited fun.

Mamma Mia! is back again. For the third time in six years, the cute and comedic musical makes a run at the Providence Performing Arts Center. High-brow it’s not. The dialogue is often predictable. The sexual innuendo is less than subtle. But for what it is, light musical theater, it’s cheerfully entertaining, with something of a cult-like following.

Those would be the ABBA fans. And since the Swedish pop band disbanded decades ago, Mamma Mia! is their fans’ Mecca.

The two-act, 2½-hour production, which opened Tuesday at PPAC and runs through Sunday, is a celebration of ABBA songs, some of which are quite catchy and compelling, in a disco sort of way: “Super Trouper,” “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and “Dancing Queen,” among others.

The show, created in 1999 by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus and so far seen by some 32 million people worldwide, features nearly two dozen ABBA songs that support a central plot. Donna is a single mother and her daughter Sophie is about to get married. Sophie doesn’t know who her father is but would like him to escort her down the aisle, if she can find him. And looking at her mother’s old diary brings Sophie close to a discovery. In the diary, Sophie finds three men that her mother dated at the time she was conceived. So she sends wedding invitations to each of the three men, on behalf of her unbeknownst mother.

The production uses a nine-piece band, which at the outset plays a little too loudly for the singers, who use hidden microphones and whose voices are of mixed strength. Fortunately, the strongest singers are the leads.

Rose Sezniak plays Sophie, the central character. Her voice is delicate but strong, clear and sweet. Susie McMonagle plays Sophie’s mother, Donna, and over the course of the show, she shows range from softness to jazzy soulfulness.

Several of the show’s songs are quite engaging, prompting toe tapping and even rhythmic clapping in the audience. Still, there are lulls when a song tries to present some poignancy in the plot, such as when Donna sings about letting her daughter go, releasing her to marriage and adulthood, “Slipping Through My Fingers,” and when she reflects on her past, “The Winner Takes It All,” which is a light song but ends with McGonagle showing she can vocally belt.

Most people associate Mamma Mia! with its songs. But the character of the show doesn’t come so much from the songs as their presentations, more particularly the choreography that comes with them. The spirit of the show is a campy kind of humor, but the spoken and sung words aren’t that funny.

What is funny are the antics that accompany the spoken and sung words. Credit the choreographer, Anthony Van Laast. Seeing six guys in purple SCUBA suits line-dancing and high-stepping with flippers and masks to the tune “Lay All Your Love On Me” is something. And a stage full of people who in unison turn or drop their heads to an occasional deep base beat in “Money, Money, Money” is amusing.

But by far the best scene is when Donna is joined by her two friends, Rosie and Tanya, who years earlier joined her in the band Donna and the Dynamos. Donna tells them that three men have arrived in the tavern she owns, and one of them is the father of her daughter, but she doesn’t know which one.

Rosie, played by Kittra Wynn Coomer, and Tanya, played by Michelle Dawson, respond with an impromptu duet, “Dancing Queen,” singing into a snorkel and a hairdryer, respectively, as they chest bump like professional male athletes, pantomime and prance about in a hearty and sustained stretch of humor. Later, both Coomer and Dawson sing individually in two very different ways. Dawson, who plays a woman married and divorced multiple times who has also had several cosmetic surgeries and frequently draws attention to her breasts, is sultry in manner and tone, putting some young sexual suitor in his place when she sings “Does Your Mother Know.”

Coomer is hilarious in a scene with Martin Kildare, who plays Bill Austin, an Australian writer and one of the three men who could have fathered Sophie. Coomer and Kildare are alone in a room, and Coomer becomes smitten, standing behind him, staring at him and singing “Take A Chance On Me” a cappella at first, vamping about, striking pseudo seductive poses. Then the music kicks in and the chase is on, as Coomer chases Kildare around the room.

In the end, the identity of Sophie’s father is unresolved, her wedding is postponed, but everything ends sweetly, to the tunes of ABBA.

Mamma Mia! is at PPAC, 220 Weybosset St., Providence, through Sunday. Shows are today at 7:30 p.m.; tomorrow at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. For tickets, $44 to $71, call (401) 421-2997 or visit www.ppacri.org.

brourke@projo.com