ABBA - MAMMA MIA! - Jim Colyer

Mamma Mia! is billed as The World's No. 1 Show. Catherine Johnson took about 20 ABBA songs and wrote a mother/daughter story around them. Her book is appropriate as women's issues are a major theme of songwriters Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. Detractors like to call Mamma Mia! a jukebox musical. If nothing else, it is a means of perpetuating the ABBA catalog, a body of 110 songs that rival The Beatles in quality. Indeed, ABBA was the Swedish Fab Four. Mamma Mia! stays on tour. It has a permanant home in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. It is refreshing to see a musical whose every song is a recognizable hit. Dancing Queen, Take A Chance On Me and Waterloo transport us back to the late 1970s, that halcyon interlude between Vietnam and the War on Terrorism. We will never relive that period but Mamma Mia! offers an over-the-shoulder glimpse. I write about ABBA. Addressing Mamma Mia! critics, that ABBA music is 30 years old is not a legetimate complaint. Mozart is older. Shakespeare holds up when modern playwrites are shallow. ABBA wrote and produced the brightest, most positive pop music ever. Their songs carry 2 hours even if the plot around them is thin. ABBA songs are like 3 and 4 minute dramas. Their songs are character-based. Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus went into theatre after ABBA and wrote the Chess musical with Tim Rice. They staged Kristina Fran Duvemala in Sweden. They tended in this direction from the beginning. That the songs appear randomly placed in the show is a matter of perspective. It hinges on knowing the songs before hand. If each of us had written a book around 20 ABBA songs, the show would have come out different every time. Catherine Johnson had the idea first, and her sequence stands. Someone said that Mamma Mia! is a party, and he was right. ABBA's music was fun. It still is! B&B said they would like to do one more musical. They did not realize they had already written the music for it. Bjorn said that after Chess bombed on Broadway that he never wanted to come back to New York. Mamma Mia! has eased a lot of his pain. Mamma Mia is set on a Greek Island. There is the mother, the daughter and 3 possible dads. I saw the show at The Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville in 2002. It is true that the plot of Mamma Mia! is thin and was contrived as a way of tieing ABBA's biggest hits together. The jukebox musical is having its moment. Mamma Mia! works, however, in a way that the others do not. I think it is is because of the nature of ABBA's catalog. ABBA songs are like little dramas in themselves. There is a strong feminist attitude, and the theme of mother/daughter relationships permeates. Agnetha and Frida were both mothers in the ABBA years. Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus wrote the songs around their wives. Benny and Bjorn teamed up with Tim Rice for Chess and came to Broadway. Chess bombed. The soundtrack was great, but the story remained in a state of flux and changed with each staging as it moved around the globe. Benny and Bjorn went looking for a concrete story. They adapted 4 classic novels to the stage by Swedish author, Vilhelm Moberg. Their musical, Kristina!, is about the first Swedish emigrants to come to America. Kristina! was a hit in Sweden in the 1990s but was 4 hours long and was in Swedish. Benny and Bjorn's dream now is to get a 2 hour version in English to Broadway. It may happen. It may not. They are turning 60. Mamma Mia! has helped. It has given them a hit on Broadway and a worldwide hit. Mamma Mia! is an evening of entertainment and fun. It is a look back at our younger days and it may pave the way for Kristina!
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com