By SHARON EBERSON
Whether you love’em, hate ’em or judge each on its own merit, you can credit Mamma Mia! with paving the way to the jukebox musicals that have followed in the super trouper’s wake.
of the Mamma Mia! 25th Anniversary Tour. (Image: Joan Marcus)
A tour celebrating 25 years of the show built around the music of Swedish pop/disco band ABBA arrives at the Benedum Center as part of the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh Series, starting Tuesday, March 26, through March 31, 2024.
Mamma Mia! originated in London in 1999 and set sail for the States in 2001, to become the ninth longest-running show on Broadway, spanning 14 years, from October 18, 2001, to September 12, 2015. The musical has been seen in 50 productions in 16 languages, grossing more than $4 billion at the box office. A North American from 2000 to 2017, included four different touring companies.
Two popular movies have come and gone, and the show with a premise made for a Jerry Springer-style reveal has been a favorite of high schools from the moment the rights became available.
The book of Mamma Mia! revolves around a free spirit named Donna, who has had a trio of sexual encounters and becomes pregnant – before DNA testing to determine paternity was available, Donna then raises her daughter, Sophie, as a single parent. Twenty years later, when Sophie is about to be wed, she finds her mother’s diary and discovers the names of the three men who may be her father, and invites all three to her wedding.
I will let The New York Times’ Ben Brantley, reviewing the show’s Broadway introduction, take it from here. He wrote:
“[If] you take apart Mamma Mia! ingredient by ingredient, you can only wince. It has a sitcom script about generations in conflict that might as well be called ‘My Three Dads.’ The matching acting, perky and italicized, often brings to mind the house style of ‘The Brady Bunch.’ … [The] score consists entirely of songs made famous in the disco era by the Swedish pop group ABBA, music that people seldom admit to having danced to, much less sung in their showers. Yet these elements have been combined, with alchemical magic, into the theatrical equivalent of comfort food.”
“Alchemical magic” seems about right, although we shouldn’t sell the music short. ABBA – Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad – is one of the best-selling bands ever, with nine No. 1 singles and 10 No. 1 albums in the UK.
ABBA’s song Dancing Queen, which reached No. 1 on the U.S. charts, made a comeback courtesy of the Swedish cover band A-Teens, the year before the musical arrived on Broadway.
When you consider the popularity of the band’s music worldwide, it was genius, really, for songwriters Andersson and Ulvaeus, teaming with British playwright Catherine Johnson and others, to come up with a way to present their music within an original story, before such things became de rigueur.
According to the 2023 Vogue article marking the 15-year anniversary of the first Mamma Mia! movie, “Thank You for the Music: An Oral History of Mamma Mia!,” the show was the brainchild of English producer Judy Craymer, who envisioned ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All” as the 11 o’clock number even before there was a story concept. Andersson and Ulvaeus took some convincing, having moved on to other projects that included the musical Chess, with all original songs.
Although the show was a wild success in its London premiere, the experience of Chess — Ulvaeus told Vogue that Frank Rich’s New York Times pan sunk that show — made him hesitant about bringing it to Broadway. So, in a compromise with Craymer, who was eager to bring the show to New York, other North American stops came first.
The first city to produce the show after London was Toronto, where it ran for five years.
Mamma Mia!, recalled Vogue writer by Keaton Bell, became the first musical to open on Broadway after the 9/11 attacks. “With advance ticket sales of $27 million, it was already a highly anticipated hit, but in the aftermath of 9/11, Mamma Mia! became a beacon of joy for New York audiences. After that, it wasn’t long before Hollywood came calling,” Bell wrote.
On Broadway in 2024, it is the turn of Huey Lewis and the News’ musical comedy The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll – an original story to go along with songs from their catalogs, following in the recent footsteps of, for example, Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill.
I would call shows that weave songs into real-life stories – the Tony-winning Jersey Boys and those about Peter Allen, Carole King, Tupac Shakur, Cher, Neil Diamond and Imelda Marcos, to name just a few – biomusicals. Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen, which opens this season, is described as semi-autobiographical.
In my book, that makes Mamma Mia! the Grand Dame of the jukebox musical genre.
To account for staying power, there’s that “alchemical magic,” courtesy of the all-ages music appeal of Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Famers ABBA, romance on a Grecian isle, a loving mother-daughter relationship, long-lasting friendships, and nostalgia for unabashed silliness and spandex.
Original stage director Phyllida Lloyd, whose work includes the movie The Iron Lady and the Tina Turner biomusical, has stayed with the stage show through three tours including the current North American tour that’s headed to Pittsburgh. The resident director is Martha Banta, who last year directed tick, tick … BOOM! for Pittsburgh CLO.
Christine Sherrill, who played the role of Donna Sheridan during a residency with the Las Vegas company of Mamma Mia!, leads the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh presentation at the Benedum Center.
The cast includes Alisa Melendez (Broadway’s Almost Famous) as Sophie Sheridan and Carnegie Mellon School of Drama alum Grant Reynolds (Billy Porter’s Anything’s Possible) as Sophie’s beau, Sky, with Carly Sakolove as Rosie, Victor Wallace as Sam Carmichael, Jalynn Steele as Tanya, Rob Marnell as Harry Bright and Jim Newman.
Rounding out the cast are Louis Griffin, Patrick Park, L’Oréal Roaché, Haley Wright, Gabe Amato, Caro Daye Attayek, Adia Olanethia Bell, Emily Croft, Madison Deadman, Jordan De Leon, Nico DiPrimio, Patrick Dunn, Stephanie Genito, Danny Lopez-Alicea, Makoa, Faith Northcutt, Jasmine Overbaugh, Gray Phillips, Blake Price, Dorian Quinn, Xavi Soto Burgos and Amy Weaver.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh presentation of Mamma Mia! is at the Benedum Center, Downtown, March 26-31, 2024. Tickets: visit https://trustarts.org/production/86819/mamma-mia or call 412-456-4800.
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