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Composers of theatrical musicals strive to have audiences walk out of their shows humming the score. It’s going to be a little bit different with Mamma Mia!, opening April 6th, 1999 at the Prince Edward Theatre in London’s West End.
The audience is going to walk into the theater humming the songs, because they’re already going to know them. Boasting a score of 27 ABBA songs written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and also some with Stig Anderson, Mamma Mia! has been attracting interest from all over the world during its rehearsals and is expected to be one of the West End’s most popular attractions this Summer.
The idea for Mamma Mia! began with Judy Craymer, a television-production executive involved with Chess, who wanted to do a TV program based on ABBA songs. Ulvaeus gave his blessing and suggested she find someone to write the story, but he and Andersson weren’t planning to be involved.
Mother-and-daughter reunion
Craymer met with various writers who came up with different ideas. “People wanted animals in it, and it was going to be a panto at one point,” says Ulvaeus, referring to the British pantomime tradition. “Then, about two years ago, I was with my wife and daughters in London to see Grease. Walking through the West End, I thought it would be great to have a show here again, because there’s such an atmosphere. When I saw Grease, it wasn’t very good that night, but people loved the hits. A story and hits. And suddenly, I could see what potential a show like Mamma Mia! could have. That’s when I got involved.”
Dramatist Catherine Johnson had a two-hour meeting with Craymer, and, as she stood to go, an idea popped into Johnson’s head about a mother-and-daughter story where the daughter was getting married. Johnson wrote an eight-page treatment indicating where the songs might go, and her idea became Mamma Mia!
Having worked in a record store in Bristol in the late 1970s, Johnson was familiar with ABBA’s hits. “But I didn’t know the back catalog,” she explains. “It was an organic process, looking at the lyrics, knowing it was going to be a two-generational theme. That meant we could use some of the more poppy, upbeat songs for the younger generation and the ones that are about disappointment and heartbreak for the older generation.”
Johnson realized that the songs were stories in themselves. “We haven’t taken liberties; we didn’t have to twist the songs around,” she says. “There are some we’ve used in a very unusual way that makes perfect sense. It’s being bold with the songs and not thinking of them as being sung by two female vocalists, but thinking who could sing this. Once you free yourself up, there are all kinds of possibilities. They will sound fantastic. They will sound like ABBA.”
Ulvaeus explains why: “I asked [ABBA engineer] Michael B. Tretow to use the original tapes, and I gave them to our Swedish arranger, and he transcribed everything. So, in rehearsals, it sounded right immediately. By playing the tracks at a very high level, the actors can hear exactly what we did, and they sing like that. The foundation for this was to do it as it was.”
No clunkiness
Hits like Dancing Queen and Knowing me, Knowing You will be accompanied by lesser-known tracks like Our Last Summer and one ABBA song that has never been released in its complete form, Just Like That.
“There’s one very well-known song that didn’t work at all, which may turn up at some point during the evening in some context,” Johnson reveals. “That’s Waterloo. It’s very difficult to make that work in the story without it being a clunky moment.”
A cast album featuring lead actors Siobhan McCarthy, Lisa Stokke and Andrew Langtree (the latter two are graduates of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts making their West End debuts) will be recorded during the Summer for an October release on Polydor.Transcribed for ABBA World
Credits: ABBA tribute comments were compiled by Billboard international music editor Dominic Pride, Scandinavian bureau chief Kai Lfthus, contributing editor Paul Sexton and contributor Debbie Galante Block.
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