MAMMA MIA!

On Tuesday, February 15th, the cast and crew of the hit musical Mamma Mia! celebrated the show's 4th anniversary in Las Vegas. Following the 7:30 p.m. show, the cast and crew of the musical received a certificate of senatorial recognition on-stage in honor of four hit years. The festivities continued as the cast celebrates their 4th anniversary at Mandalay Bay's Border Grill.Mamma Mia! remains the most successful and longest running full scale Broadway musical in Las Vegas and has played over 1,500 performances to more than 1 million people. "Inspired by the story-telling magic of ABBA’s timeless songs, writer Catherine Johnson’s sunny, funny tale of family and friendship unfolds on a Greek island. On the eve of her wedding, a daughter’s quest to discover the identity of her father brings 3 men from her mother’s past back to the island they last visited 20 years ago. Songs including “Dancing Queen,' 'The Winner Takes It All,' 'Money, Money, Money' and 'Take A Chance on Me' are all featured in this feel-good night of fun and laughter."Led by a creative team of Judy Craymer (Producer), Catherine Johnson (Book) and Phyllida Lloyd (Director), Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’ (music and lyrics) Mamma Mia! opened at London's Prince Edward Theatre in April, 1999. The show has broken box office records around the world. Mamma Mia! is produced by Judy Craymer, Richard East and Björn Ulvaeus for Littlestar in association with Universal.A mother. A daughter. 3 possible dads. And a trip down the aisle you'll never forget!Over 30 million people all around the world have fallen in love with the characters, the story and the music that make MAMMA MIA! the ultimate feel-good show!Writer Catherine Johnson's sunny, funny tale unfolds on a Greek island paradise. On the eve of her wedding, a daughter's quest to discover the identity of her father brings 3 men from her mother's past back to the island they last visited 20 years ago.The story-telling magic of ABBA’s timeless songs propels this enchanting tale of love, laughter and friendship, and every night everyone’s having the time of their lives!With more productions playing internationally than any other musical, MAMMA MIA! is a Global Smash Hit!On Broadway, Las Vegas, London and US TourHAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMMA MIA! VEGASMAMMA MIA! Las Vegas celebrated four years on the Strip at the Mandalay Bay Resort on Thursday, February 15, 2007. Nevada Senator John Ensign's office presented a senatorial recognition certificate to the cast following the show in honour of MAMMA MIA!'s four hit years in Las Vegas. MAMMA MIA! remains the most successful and longest running full scale Broadway musical in Las Vegas and has played over 1,500 performances to more than 1 million people. So have the time of your life with and sing along with all ABBA's hit songsIt was on March 23, 1999 that the musical MAMMA MIA! met its first and most crucial test when it was put in front of its first - ever paying audience in London - and was given the kind of welcome it has been getting ever since, every night, at every one of the many productions that have since followed. But on that early spring evening in London, it was still a completely unknown quantity. “We really had no idea how it was going to be received," reflects the producer Judy Craymer whose initial concept, exactly a decade earlier, had been to use existing ABBA songs within the format of a new, original musical. But happily, she remembers, “The audience went wild. They were literally out of their seats and singing and dancing in the aisles - and they still are. Every night.”And now, they are doing so all around the world. It has become a global entertainment phenomenon; but it is one that works on a far more elemental basis, in which its creators have never lost sight of what they are seeking to achieve. That is, the process of personalising a familiar repertoire of particular ABBA songs in a fresh, vital and immediate way that simultaneously retains their pop integrity yet also does something more that is an essential requirement of good musical theatre: to advance an appealing story and comment on it.But though in this case the songs came first - and it was Craymer ’s genius to spot their theatrical potential so early on - she also had to find a way of unlocking that potential, with a story strong enough to carry them. “I knew from the outset that MAMMA MIA! had to be much more than just an ABBA compilation or tribute show,” she comments. “The story had to be as infectious as the music and provide a strong feel - good factor.” That, however, is easier said than done, and thus began Craymer’s decade - long crusade to find it and bring it to the stage. The producer, who had been in on the ground floor (or, at any rate, the backstage door) of another West End musical phenomenon when she was a stage manager on the original London production of CATS in 1981, had subsequently joined Tim Rice's production company, and it was there, while working as Executive Producer on the West End production of his, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’s first post-ABBA project, CHESS, that she was first bowled over by Benny and Björn.For Björn, meanwhile, it was his experience on the subsequent ill-fated Broadway production of CHESS that taught him an important lesson. “What I understood after CHESS is that story is number 1, number 2 and number 3, as they say on Broadway. A lyric should take a story forward, and a lot of pop songs are static - they have no drama in them whatsoever.”The playwright, Catherine Johnson, who was commissioned to write the book for MAMMA MIA!, fortunately found plenty of drama in them; and indeed, a plot out of them. Not only are they frequently complete stories within themselves, but she also discovered something else important: that many of the early ABBA songs were more innocent, naïve and teenage-orientated, whereas later on they became more mature and reflective. And, of course, it was women who sang them. So that suggested a story about two generations of women, namely a mother and a daughter.Ulvaeus, while insisting that lyrics weren’t arbitrarily changed, for his part also demanded, “the story is more important than the song ”, but for Johnson, the challenge was that, “whatever happens in the story, I always have to come back to the song.” She was intent on avoiding the perennial fault of musicals: “We didn’t want to have those awful clunky moments where people burst into song. I am primarily a dramatist. To me, it was very important that I created believable characters and gave them all a true story line, and I absolutely worked to get the story and the songs to work together.”It then fell to Craymer to find the ship's captain of any musical: a director. Though Phyllida Lloyd had never directed a musical before, Craymer instinctively felt she would be right for the project - and Lloyd, whose own background was in plays and opera, accepted the challenge, knowing that if she stuck to what she knew - how to help actors create characters and stories - things would be okay. Grounding the project as a good director does, it was able to take flight.Though it was accident rather than design, Craymer notes, “I am delighted that MAMMA MIA!’s success was the result of an unprecedented collaboration of three women, but there was no discrimination of men intended.” And in fact, the onstage relationships of the three best friends - Donna and the Dynamos - at the centre of the piece mirrors that of the women who between them created the show Craymer has indeed commented, “We all see ourselves as those three women on the stage, because Catherine is the slightly chaotic single mom, I’m the high-maintenance one, and the pragmatic one is Phyllida.”The secret of the show ’s success, however, is that it’s not just its creators who see themselves onstage, but the audiences do, too. Phyllida Lloyd notes, “In Catherine Johnson’s ingenious story, the audience seem to be having a very particular experience.They are seeing themselves on stage.” In the process, the songs are re-born and the show’s themes - of lost parents, a search for identity, and the generation gap - have a universal resonance. As Johnson says, “There’s a mother-daughter relationship; an old romance; there’s losing someone and finding them again. There are all kinds of things that everyone can relate to.” This is a show about real people in real situations, yet a wonderful pop score that provided the soundtrack for a generation in the ’70s and early ’80s anchors it now as the soundtrack for a show whose appeal crosses all age and national boundaries. The essence of that is conveyed, too, in the distinctive logo for MAMMA MIA!: an image of timeless wedding day happiness that instantly conveys emotions of joy, even elation, just as the show itself does. Like the show it represents, that picture has become an internationally recognised brand in cities around the world as the image of MAMMA MIA!The show also happily reconciles the worlds of pop music and musical theatre that were once indivisible: indeed, in the ’30s and ’40s, the popular music of the day came from the world of musicals, whether of the Broadway or Hollywood variety, but as pop music gained its own ascendancy in the ’50s and into the ’60s, musical theatre was left behind to go its own, variously sophisticated ways. MAMMA MIA! is a sophisticated, but not pretentious, musical that re-introduces the familiarity of a pop idiom - with songs that people already know and love - to the theatre.Craymer attributes the success of the show first and foremost to her collaborators in every area of the show’s production, “and the chemistry they create. There is an incredible, collaborative dynamic in every area of the production.” That embraces such important and skilled contributions as the designers of the set (Mark Thompson) and lighting (Howard Harrison), sound designers (Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitken) and the choreographer (Anthony van Laast). For her, it’s all been about “holding my nerve and believing in what we’re doing - in the music, the story and the talent of those around me. It’s also about maintaining a sense of humour and being able to tap into an endless supply of energy.” But energy is fed by adrenalin and with a show like MAMMA MIA! there’s plenty of that around. It’s a quality that spreads infectiously from the stage to the audience and back again creating a never-ending cycle of energy and exhilaration that continues to thrill and delight. As director Phyllida Lloyd succinctly puts it, MAMMA MIA! is “the show Björn and Benny never knew they had written. Their music has made pop history; our show has made musical theatre history.”