Broadway review by Adam Feldman
If last week’s box-office tallies are any indication, Broadway audiences really want their mommy. The national tour of Mamma Mia! has just set up camp (or at least kitsch) at the Winter Garden Theatre, where the show’s original production ran for 14 years, and in the first week of its scheduled sixth-month engagement it outgrossed every other show except fellow marathon runners The Lion King, Wicked and Hamilton. This show, the mother of all jukebox musicals, is nothing if not familiar—and in this case, familiarity breeds contentment.
Comfort has always been central to this show’s appeal. Mamma Mia! is constructed around nearly two dozen 1970s Europop bops by the Swedish megagroup ABBA, including “Dancing Queen,” “Super Trouper” and “Take a Chance on Me”: all the ABBA songs you love plus a few others you probably don’t have strong feelings about one way or the other. (Of the 19 tracks on the greatest-hits album ABBA Gold, the only one missing here is “Fernando,” which was sliced from an early draft.) These songs—written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, sometimes with help from Stig Anderson—are easy to swallow and hard to resist, with infectious melodies and lyrics that are, shall we say, direct: Their titles include "Honey, Honey," "Money, Money, Money," "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" and "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do."
Mamma Mia! | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
But while Mamma Mia! originally inspired warm fuzzies for its score, it now offers a second level of nostalgia: for earlier iterations of itself. At this point, the musical has been seen live by roughly 70 million people, and its 2008 film version with Meryl Streep was a runaway success. What that means is that much of the audience at its current Broadway iteration will already know the ins and outs of the wacky plot devised by playwright Catherine Johnson to accommodate the songs. In brief: A young bride-to-be, Sophie (Amy Weaver), has been raised in the Greek isles by an independent single mother, Donna (Christine Sherrill). But she is determined to learn the identity of her father, who could be any of three men that Donna bedded some 21 years before. One of them, Sam (Victor Wallace), broke her heart; the others—Harry (Rob Marnell), now a London financier, and Bill (Jim Newman), now a travel writer—were strictly rebounds. Unbeknownst to her mom, Sophie invites all three men to her Mediterranean matrimony; confusion and romcom antics follow.
Mamma Mia! | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
The Mamma Mia! at the Winter Garden today, cannily directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is the same Mamma Mia! that left the Winter Garden ten years ago. The whitewashed walls of Mark Thompson’s unobtrusive modular set once again provide an attractively simple background for musical numbers choreographed with occasional energy and humor by Anthony Van Laast; Thompson’s costumes pop when they need to, especially the out-of-this-world ABBA-style get-ups worn by Donna and her former girl-group bandmates, the easygoing Rosie (Carly Sakalove) and the haughty cougar Tanya (Jalynn Steele). And the score, of course, remains a suite of spiked energy shots, culminating in a curtain-call megamix that leaves the crowd buzzed. The musical’s less salutary elements, mind you, are also unchanged: The dialogue is still largely silly; the synth-drenched orchestra is still too loud, sometimes drowning out the vocals; the younger characters still often act like they’ve all just snorted Pixy Stix.
Mamma Mia! | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
The production is at its liveliest, though, when it feels the most new—which is principally in three of its central performances. Sakalove’s good-humored Rosie is utterly endearing in a warm, natural way, and Steele gives Tanya a tinge of specifically Black fabulousness (and breaks out impressive moves in “Does Your Mother Know”). And both of them know how to make fresh, funny marks on their roles without stealing focus. Sherrill seems an unusual choice for Donna at first—she looks more like a Real Housewife than a hardscrabble taverna owner—but she has a tremendous voice, and by the time she gets to her high-drama 11-o’clock showstopper, “The Winner Takes It All,” she’s made you actually care, however briefly, about the show’s emotional stakes. Unlike most of the jukebox musicals that have tried to replicate its formula, Mamma Mia! keeps its balance: It draws you just enough in while maintaining an amused sense of itself. It never loses sight of what it offers at its core: the joy of vicarious karaoke.
Mamma Mia! Winter Garden Theatre (Broadway). Music and lyrics by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson. Book by Catherine Johnson. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. With Christine Sherrill, Carly Sakolove, Jalynn Steele, Amy Weaver, Victor Wallace, Rob Marnell, Jim Newman, Grant Reynolds. Running time: 2hrs 30mins. One intermission.
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Mamma Mia! | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
