"ABBA has an amazing talent for music, and one thing leads to another"
MUMMY MIA THE MUSICAL: WORLD POPULAR ELEMENTS
British journalist Mark Shandon has witnessed Mamma Mia the Musical from its premiere in 1999 to the present day, and there is no other world musical show in the world can match the scale of its performance.
It was March 22, 1999, when the musical Mamma Mia met its first and most crucial test - the first time it came to a paying audience in London - and they were greeted by the same audience as ever. And that's been the case for every show, every night since. But until then, on a London spring night, everything was completely unpredictable. "We really didn't know if it would be accepted by the audience", says producer Judy Craymer, whose original idea was to place songs from the ABBA group from exactly 10 years ago into a new, original format - the musical. She happily recalls, "The audience went wild. They literally jumped out of their seats and danced and sang their hearts out in the aisles in the theater. It's still like that to this day, every night there's a show.
They have now spread around the world in this way, becoming a global entertainment phenomenon; a phenomenon that nevertheless has a fairly natural basis behind it, with the creators never taking their eyes off what they are trying to achieve. That is to say, to personalize in a fresh, vital and direct way the show as it is known, especially the ABBA songs. All the while keeping its pop music qualities intact. And, moreover, to put in the extra effort that's necessary for a good musical: elevating the story and commenting on it.
But even though the songs were given top billing in this one case - Craymer used a genius intuition to spot the potential value of these earlier songs that could be used in a musical - she also had to find a way to unleash that potential by carrying them through very strong storytelling. "I knew from the very beginning of the musical Mamma Mia that it was going to be more than simply rearranging the ABBA music or getting it into a tribute show," she comments. "The story had to be presented in a highly infectious way that was appropriate to the ABBA music, to be tapped into in a way that made it accessible." Easier said than done, however, and it took Craymer a decade of work to bring it to life for that reason. In order to be a good producer, she was on hand (or at least backstage) to observe another musical, West End, when she was stage manager of the original London production of Cats, and then she joined Tom Rice's production company. It was also there that she was introduced to Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus' first post-ABBA breakup project, CHESS, in her role as executive producer of West End, and she was completely smitten by Benny and Björn.
For Björn, it was the Broadway run of "CHESS," which was later doomed to bad luck, that taught him an important lesson in life. "My understanding of storytelling after CHESS was first, second, third, as they say on Broadway. The lyrics move the story forward, and many of the songs are noise, with little drama." Playwright Catherine Johnson was commissioned to write a book about the musical Mamma Mia, and fortunately found a great deal of theater in it that she managed to extract. Not only the whole story itself later on, but she found other important things as well: the early ABBA songs were more natural, clueless, and na?ve, suitable for teenagers, yet later on ABBA became more mature and philosophical. And, of course, the songs were all sung by women. She thus suggests that the storytelling be framed in terms of women of two ages, a mother and her daughter.Ulvaeus insisted that the lyrics could not be tampered with arbitrarily, as did his part that "the story was far more important than the song." But for Johnson, the challenge was that "no matter what was told in the story, I always had to return to the song." She was determined to avoid the mistakes that have plagued musical theater for years: "I didn't want to mix songs in with the obnoxiously dull bits. It's vitally important to me that I'm the one who creates compelling characters and incorporates them into a story line, and I certainly try to do my best to make the story and the songs work perfectly together."
The next thing Craymer had to start doing was finding a good captain for the musical ship: a director. Though Phyllida Lloyd had never directed any musical before, Craymer instinctively felt that she and Lloyd were the right people for the project, and with her own background in theater and opera, she took on the challenge of doing as much as she could - helping the actors create their characters and act out the story! -- and everything will fall into place. When a good director has done a good job laying the groundwork for this project, it's time for it to take off.
Things don't go as smoothly as expected, Craymer writes: "I take comfort in the fact that the success of the musical Mamma Mia is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between three women, and that this is not intentionally discriminatory against men." Indeed, the camaraderie between the three best friends onstage - Donna and Dynamo (mother-daughter, sisters?) -- is officially a projection of the show's creators themselves.Craymer emphasizes, "We see ourselves in all three of the women in the show, because Catherine is a more or less disorganized single mother, and I myself am one of those nurturing types. Phyllida, on the other hand, is the quintessential pragmatist." The secret to the show's success, however, is not that the creators find a projection of themselves on stage, but that the audience does.
Phyllida Lloyd writes: "In Catherine Johnson's original storytelling, the audience enjoys a special experience - seeing themselves on stage." In the process, the songs are reborn, and the show's themes - parents finding their own identities and the generation gap - generate universal ****ing choruses. As Johnson says, "There's a mother-daughter relationship here, a nostalgic romance where certain people get lost and are found again. All sorts of things find relevance in everyone." This show shows the real lives of people in real situations, while the melodies of pop music set the sound track for the generation of the 70's and early 80's, and the show's sound track seems to cross the boundaries of eras and countries. The essence of what it is trying to convey is brought to life through the logo of the musical Mamma Mia - the joy, even revelry, of a timeless picture of a wedding. As the show represents, this image is widely identified with the images of the musical Mamma Mia by cities around the world.
The show also brought the worlds of popular music and musical theater together in a harmonious cohesion, inseparable from each other: true, in the '30s and '40s, popular music came out of the world of musical theater - the product of a thousand variations of Broadway or Hollywood - but popular music came to dominate in the '50s and '60s. Musical theater was left to develop on its own and traveled a winding and tedious path. The musical "Mamma Mia" is sophisticated but not insular, bringing back familiar pop classics and bringing music back to the theater with songs people know and love.
Craymer credits the success of the show first and foremost to the collaborators in all areas of the show's production, "who have created the chemistry and the incredible collaboration that has fueled the progress in all areas of the production." These include the crucial and highly skilled creative contributions of set design (Mark Thompson), lighting (Howard Harrison), music design (Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitken) and choreography (Anthony van Laast). For her, it's about "having the courage to believe in what we're doing - the music, the story, and the talent around me. And of course to keep a clinical sense of humor and bring out inexhaustible energy at all times."
But energy comes not only from adrenal glands, but also from passionate productions like the musical "Mamma Mia". The quality of "Mamma Mia the Musical" is that the infectious passion can travel from the stage to the audience and back again, creating a never-ending cycle of energy, inspiring body shaking and joy.
As director, Phyllida Lloyd succinctly summarizes the musical "Mamma Mia" as follows: "This is a show that Björn and Benny never expected when they were writing their songs. Their music made pop music history and our show made musical theater history."