Thirty years ago, on their third attempt, and up and coming Swedish vocal group with a distinctive style won the celebrated Eurovision music competition with an original ditty called “Waterloo”. Having the good forethought to perform the song in English, it became not just a European novelty but a global sensation, landing them on the map for the first time in the US Billboard Top 40. Comprised of Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, visionary composers, and their wives Annifrid Lyngstad and Agnethe Fälstkog, their perfect vocal interpreters, the original international pop supergroup ABBA was born.
Out of the disco years and into the 80s, the quartet topped charts all across the globe with their distinctive sound. As the two couples separated, the group fell apart, and Ulvaeus and Andersson stayed together as a songwriting team. The two showcased their versatility when in the mid 80s they teamed up with Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber’s former partner Tim Rice to write the cult megahit Chess. In the 90s, their music lived on as the inspiration of two successful Australian films, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Muriel’s Wedding. In 1998, the duo teamed up with writer Catherine Johnson to develop their own musical, featuring their own chart-topping hits. Mamma Mia opened at the Prince Edward Theatre in London in 1999, followed by a Toronto company a year later, and made Broadway history at the Winter Garden Theatre in 2001. Mamma Mia pioneered the success of the modern juke box musical that was not a revue (discounting the poorly executed and critically panned 1985 Ellie Greenwich musical attempt, Leader of the Pack, which ran a mere 4 months), and created a new popular subset of musical theatre. Since then it has spawned dozens of international companies and national tours as well as two movies with all-star casts. In Mamma Mia, the music of ABBA, 50 years after they first won Eurovision, continues to take the world by storm. And this season at the Kennedy Center wraps up with the 25th Anniversary Tour of the musical behemoth, the 6th longest running musical still playing in London and the 9th longest ever in New York.
After a low energy national tour several years ago that really didn’t pick up steam until about halfway through the first act and the recent farewell tour that was a glorified community theatre production, I was anxious about this musical that has such personal history for me. I was a 16-year old ABBA geek playing their greatest hits in my bedroom on repeat. I still know all the guy’s harmonies for every song they recorded. I saw the Toronto production 6 months before it premiered in New York and felt that somebody had written a show just for me (this was decades before The Cher Show turned out to be that show, but this still that same feel). I promoted and defended it when everyone saw the TV promos and wondered why are these aged women women singing ABBA songs in spandex suits? (I’m going to bust a lot of people here who now proclaim they love ABBA; that’s a lie, not one of you took me seriously in my superfan teen years, you fairweather ABBA friends.) Point is, there was a lot riding on this Anniversary Tour for this particular lifelong ABBA fan, who is still a 16 year old kid sitting in front of his record player when the music comes on.
Well, the good news is that this production is still Super, Troupers. The beauty is that absolutely nothing has been changed from the beginning. It’s the same set, costumes, blocking, choreography, and corny script that fans have loved for 25 years, and this cast embraces it all in the best ways. But on the other hand, without any changes, it still feels as fresh and fun and new as it did in the waning years of the last century. And I still had the same reactions I did the first time I saw it in Toronto 24 years ago: the thrill when the opening chords of “Honey, Honey” come up from the orchestra pit, the tears when old friends try to cheer Donna Sheridan up with, of all things, “Dancing Queen”, or when Donna sings the heartbreakers “Slipping Through My Fingers” and “The Winner Takes It All” back to back, and the jubilation when they play songs like “Mamma Mia” , “Does Your Mother Know”, and “Take A Chance On Me” for broad laughs and fun. And the overwhelming joy in the “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do” finale that turns into an extended concert fantasy during bows that give the audience the chance to join in the vocal jubilation.
By now, you know the story. Back in the 70s, a strong, independent college graduate backpacking through Europe with her classmates finds herself pregnant in Greece and decides to stay there and raise the daughter as a single mother. Cut to today, and that daughter, to her mother’s discontent, is planning a big traditional white wedding and, never having known who her father is, sends out three invitations to three random men her mother confessed to having been intimate with 21 years ago in her diary. When all three men show up having no idea why they’re truly invited, as well as her flabbergasted mother who is confronted with the ghosts of three evenings of weakness 21 years ago, and two and a half hours of musical hijinks commence.
The cast is top to bottom fantastic and having a great time celebrating the unique music of a generation. Led by Christine Sherrill, direct from the Las Vegas resident company of the show, as the usually resilient Donna and Alisa Melendez as her headstrong daughter Sophie, they team up on some of the most well-known hits. Donna’s tracks favor those rich, sadder but wiser songs originally delivered by Annifrid, while Sophie gets the lighter bubblier fare originally featuring Agnethe on lead. Neither disappoints. And Sherrill shows her experience in handling all the various emotions of the ABBA catalog. She’s fun dreaming “Money, Money, Money”, hilarious stressing through the title song, and touching reliving her girl group youth with “Dancing Queen”. But her “The Winner Takes It All” is one of the best I’ve seend the number performed (the benchmark is Carolee Carmello, totally showstopping here earlier this month in Broadway Center Stage’s Nine, in the mid-2000s). The rest of the act we spend meeting their friends and guests, Proud feminist Rosie (Carly Sakolove) and serial bride Tanya (Jalynn Steele) are great comrades as her old college pals and fellow “Dynamos” (the vocal trio they appeared as in the old days), and Victor Wallace, Jim Newman, and Rob Marnell are all strong support as Sam, Bill, and Harry, the three potential dads.
Sherrill and Melendez shine in the first act as the mother/daughter dynamics are played through. But it’s in the second act that the stellar supporting cast each gets their moment to grab the spotlight, and everyone delivers. Starting at the top of the act with Steele getting things off with bang, keeping adoring young pup, barkeep Eddie (Nico DiPrimo at this performance), at bay in a sexy romp of “Does Your Mother Know”. Marnell recalls the sweet bohemian days of Paris where their romance bloomed in “Our Last Summer”. And Wallace gets two powerhouse moments, “S.O.S” with Sherrill, and “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, an ode to a bitter divorce. But even after Sherill delivers “Winner” to the rafters, it’s Sakolove and Newman who steal the show at the last minute with their 11:00 (11:30?) Entry, “Take a Chance on Me” as we watch two committed singles struggle with their unbridled lust and virtually take down an entire wedding preset minutes before the guests are to arrive. They are both skilled comedians who make the most of this hilarious, very physical musical opportunity. And to their strengths, the two also have moving moments in the first act, Sakolove displaying a velvety smooth alto line in “Chiquitita” and “Dancing Queen”, and Newman sharing a touching moment of discovery with Sophie in the haunting “The Name of the Game”. Their broad comic antics in “Take A Chance” shows how versatile these performers are.
The physical production is exactly the same as you’ve seen it, any show, anywhere in the world. Production Designer Mark Thompson sets the tone with his simple two piece taverna set that seamlessly rotates for all internal and external locations, and his costumes that nail the physicality of the 90s (and the 70s through a 90s lens). Favoring blue tones for island wear and a rose and peach theme for the big wedding, all with a very 90s feel, it’s the ABBA wear for Donna and the Dynamos that are his iconic signature pieces. He gets great use of the pattern, first appearing in white and silver when they appear for a surprise performance at Sophie’s bachelorette party, finishing with the 70s neon versions they wear for the finale, with a special black version that a temptress Donna dons in Sophie’s entre’acte black lit, too may dads nightmare, “Under Attack”.
Lighting Designer Howard Harrison contrasts all the dreamy island washes with dramatic performance and sexy disco lighting for the Dynamos’ “Super Trouper”, and the party hardy “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” and “Voulez-Vous” during the bachelorette party.
Sound Designers Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitkin work overtime to balance the deceptively complex music and multi-part vocals and wrap and sell it in a volume more appropriate for a rock concert than your usual opera house musical, but that’s exactly the desired effect. It elevates the music to the format that your used to hearing it. It’s never piercing loud, just loud enough to make a point. And that’s exactly what it should be. Having seen two previous tours at other houses with significantly less impressive sound systems, I cannot iterate how critical this job is to the success of this show.
Catherine Johnson’s book is admittedly thin and full of cheesy humor, but Director Phyllida Lloyd, at the helm for 25 years, knows exactly how to make it work. She keeps the action moving fluidly and guides her game and capable cast through the dad humor (no pun intended) filled script. Lloyd quickly moves from play off through set changes into the next scene like a disco DJ mixing tracks, which again is appropriate for the nature of the 70s dance music score, but initially leaves an unsure audience with no obvious place to insert applause, which cheats them of showing their appreciation for several key numbers, most glaringly the title number. But over all her instincts work to make the show cohesive and energized for a whole new generation.
But even with everyone on every front turning in superlative work, the true stars of this show are the once-in-a-lifetime talents of the originators of it all, composers Andersson & Ulvaeus. The musical styles they employ for various effects range from the pop and bubbly (“Honey, Honey”, “Dancing Queen”) to anxiety-ridden (“Take a Chance on Me” , “Mamma Mia”), to dreamy (“Money, Money, Money”, “I Have a Dream”), to flirty (“Lay All Your Love On Me”) to bittersweet (“Our Last Summer”, and the masterful ode to parents everywhere whose children grow up way too soon, “Slipping Through My Fingers”) to sexy (“Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight)”, “Does Your Mother Know”) to heartbreaking (“One of Us”, “S.O.S.”, and one of the best ever composed, “The Winner Takes It All”). All the emotions, upon demand, in a style that is definitively theirs. The iconic ABBA sound has been referred to as the European answer to Phil Spector’s classic “Wall of Sound” he designed for hundreds of catchy girl-group hits in the 60s. Andersson & Ulvaeus’ version is deceptively simple but incredibly complex, at times employing up to 18 lines of vocals at a time, layered on top of dozens of tech-filled instruments layers. Their songs all appear to be dance-floor bubblegum pop, but they are all in fact complex story-songs living out deeply emotionally themes, almost every one its own little 3 minute mini-musical, with a catchy 120 bpm groove. And Lloyd, with Choreographer Anthony Van Laast, understand that and package it up in an equally deceptive two and a half hour high-gloss version of fun that surprises the audience on their first visit how beautiful and moving the music of ABBA can be. But I could have told y’all that in 1979, if you’d just listened to me…….
So, in closing, it’s only proper to say, an entire lifetime later: Björn and Benny, Thank You For The Music. You have shaped the tastes of a generation of musical connoisseurs raised on the broad range of all things ABBA. This tour is everything fans will want it to be. It’s a familiar carefree romp of tough times through the lens of a gentler time, celebrating family, friends, and nostalgia, with a ton of the best music ever written. Following the feel of the show, I can sum the whole experience up like one of those Mastercard commercials that played in the early days of the musical’s premiere”
Tickets to Mamma Mia at the Kennedy Center: starting at $49
Parking in the downstairs garage: $25
Pre-show dinner: $25
The chance to feel young and sweet, only 17 again: Priceless.
Photos courtesy of Joan Marcus
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes with one intermission
Mamma Mia currently plays through September 1, 2024, at the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street NW, Washington DC 20566. For tickets, call the box office at 202.467.4600 or purchase online at