Here we go again! Mamma Mia!, the ABBA musical megahit and ninth-longest running show in Broadway history, is returning. And it’s taking the stage at the very same theatre, the Winter Garden, where it debuted back in 2001 — and stayed for most of its entire run of 5,773 performances.
“George Clooney was leaving and we were coming,” producer Judy Craymer, who created the billion-dollar musical empire, tells Broadway Direct about booking the show’s ideal venue right after the Hollywood star’s limited run of Good Night, and Good Luck closed. “Everything in theater is serendipitous, so it was just perfect. It’s very exciting to be returning to where it all started.” Performances resume August 2 for a six-month limited run.
Mamma Mia!, a story about a young woman who secretly invites three of her mother’s former lovers to her wedding on a Greek island to find out which one is her biological father, was one of the early jukebox musicals of the 2000s. The show features an original story set to preexisting music by Swedish pop superstars ABBA, including “Honey Honey,” “Super Trouper,” “Dancing Queen,” and, of course, the famous showstopping title song.
The cast features Christine Sherrill as Donna, Amy Weaver as Sophie, Carly Sakolove as Rosie, Jalynn Steele as Tanya, Rob Marnell as Harry Bright, Jim Newman as Bill Austin, Victor Wallace as Sam Carmichael, and Grant Reynolds as Sky.
The musical’s backstory is one for the history books. Mamma Mia! first premiered in London in 1999 (and is still running!). It played Toronto and Australia, followed by a tour in the United States before landing in New York City in the fall of 2001. Craymer reveals there wasn’t a plan to reach Broadway until the show was offered a home at the Winter Garden Theatre, since Cats had just ended its monumental decades-long run. Then, 9/11 happened. At first, there were concerns about opening after such a tragedy. Rudy Guiliani, then New York City’s mayor, along with theatre owners encouraged Craymer to push through and open.
“That very difficult time, it definitely hit a chord and gave people a break, really, from what was going on in the world,” Craymer recalls. “Mamma Mia! has always been an uplifting show, and that’s what it is. The story is about family and coming together and community and second chances.” Since the show had already played around the world, it had built up “quite an advance” from word of mouth by the time it opened, Craymer adds. “When you open the box office in those days, you could tell the success by the line in the street.”
Nearly a quarter century later, perhaps success is measured not by the line at the box office but by the discourse online. The 2008 movie musical starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried and the 2018 sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, has created a cult following for younger generations that never got to see the stage production once it closed at the Broadhurst Theatre in 2015. Like Wicked, the success of the films has fueled a new fandom for the source material. “It’s reinvigorating everybody to come back, to bring friends, to come in groups. That’s the feeling we’re getting,” Craymer says.
There are no plans for the film’s cast to join the stage production, nor a one-night-only concert or guest spot, Craymer says. A third movie is currently in the works, she confirms, noting there hasn’t been a table read yet. “There are endings to resolve. I think people love the story, love the journey of Sophie and Sky and want to know what happened 10 years [later] to everyone on the island.” There are discussions on how to bring back Streep’s Donna, who — spoiler! — dies in the second film to sing (“That’s what — it’ll happen…” Craymer teases), and what songs would be included or if ABBA will write some new ones.
She’s simultaneously also working on coproducing a biopic about Cher’s life. The two became close while working on the Mamma Mia! sequel. “We’ve got a good script. We haven’t got further than that,” she shares about the film that will be different than the staged musical production, The Cher Show. “It’s a movie, not a musical story. Obviously, it’s got her music in it, and obviously, whoever plays her will have to sing, but it’s very different. You’ve got more breadth to tell a story on screen, really, a different freedom. There’s a lot of work to do justice, to take her story to the screen.”
For now, the focus is bringing Mamma Mia! back to Broadway for the first time in a decade while four other productions play around the world, including on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas cruise ship. For longtime fans, the staging is as it looked when it first debuted, with the same creative team as well.
“I always felt when we closed, it felt that people would think it would come back. It definitely wasn’t the master plan to go on tour and then go back into Broadway,” says Craymer. “It took some planning, but it was great to be back at the theatre.”
