(L to R) Jalynn Steele (Tanya), Christine Sherrill (Donna Sheridan), and Carly Sakolove (Rosie) in MAMMA MIA!. Photo by Joan Marcus

On Saturday April 6, 1974, in the English coastal town of Brighton, a group known in their native Sweden but unknown to the rest of the world, won the Eurovision Song Contest with a song entitled “Waterloo.”

For Napoleon, Waterloo was big trouble. For this upstart singing group it was the start of something bigger than they could ever have anticipated.

And so begins the improbable saga of ABBA. And why not? The phenomenal success of the decade-long association of Agnetha Faltskog, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the initials of their names were to form the name ABBA) is of mythical proportions.

Over the next eight years, they would achieve countless hit singles, platinum albums, sold-out concerts, and even a movie.

And by 1982 it was all over.

Yet despite the fact that ABBA ceased to record or tour, the music refused to die.

It was on March 23, 1999 that MAMMA MIA! – a show constructed from 22 of ABBA’s most memorable songs – was put in front of a paying audience at London’s Prince Edward Theatre. Let’s be clear: musicals are not supposed to be created this way. Usually, someone has a story to tell and someone else creates a series of songs that punctuate that story. Taking a bunch of songs that were previously conceived as singles, and finding a unifying thread was as heretical as it sounds.

“We really had no idea how it was going to be received,” reflected producer Judy Craymer, whose initial concept it had been to use existing ABBA songs to construct an original musical. “The audience went wild,” she told a reporter. People “were literally out of their seats and singing and dancing in the aisles – and they still are. Every night.”

Phyllida Lloyd, MAMMA MIA’s original director, says she was offered the job only after “some wonderful person” (who must be very, very sorry now) dropped out. More than a year of workshops followed.

A life-changing anecdote Lloyd likes to tell is that, if the show is such a hit today, it is thanks to the relative of a company member who sent an unsolicited letter telling her how to fix a problem she had been struggling to identify. This gentleman explained that the show’s first two scenes were, in his words, “the wrong way around.”

“I handed the letter to [choreographer] Anthony van Laast,” Lloyd said. “We looked at each other and knew we had to change it. The new opening was immediately right. It makes it clear that this is a domestic, intimate show.”

Ultimately, however, the success of MAMMA MIA! rests in equal measure with all of its creators, whose tenacity and imagination persevered.

To quote Lloyd: “MAMMA MIA! is the musical Benny and Björn wrote years ago. They just decided to release the songs first.”

DETAILS
MAMMA MIA!
Jun 25 – 29 · Buell Theatre
Tickets