Mamma Mia is Musical at Mandalay Bay in Las VegasRead Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com To read this entire feature FREE with photos cut and paste this link: http://www.jetsettersmagazine.com/archive/jetezine/shows/vegas/mama/mia.html
MAMMA MIA! is currently
most successful musical in world with a total of eleven global productions, eight resident productions and three tours. Ticket sales generate $8,000,000 a week, and four more productions are scheduled to open this year. What is it that makes MAMMA MIA! so successful? Is it music of ABBA? Is it story? Or is it just hype?
To find answer to that question I saw MAMMA MIA! at Mandalay Bay Theater at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on February, 2004. The show had just celebrated its one year anniversary and had been voted #1 Show in Las Vegas by local news pundits. So much positive press along with kudos from friends made show sound almost too good to be true.
The theater is new and beautiful with comfortable, unobstructed seating. The curtain for MAMMA MIA! has an overlay of undulating blue and purple light that evokes memories of a psychedelic era when lava lamps were in vogue. It sets tone for play which is set on a tiny Greek island where a wedding is about to take place. As advertisements proclaim: It is a story about a mom, a daughter, and three possible dads.
Producer Judy Craymer is credited with having vision to take ABBA's music and find right people to construct a musical. She says, "I knew from outset that MAMMA MIA! had to be much more than just an ABBA compilation or tribute show. The story had to be as infectious as music and provide a strong feel-good factor." It was while working as Executive Producer on West End production of CHESS that she met Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. This was team's first post-ABBA venture and show was not a hit.
After ill-fated Broadway production of CHESS, Bjorn is quoted as saying, "What I understand 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."
Playwright Catherine Johnson was assigned task of coming up with a solid story that would incorporate Andersson and Ulvaeus' music. MAMMA MIA! is a cheerful show with poignant moments. There are more than twenty ABBA songs in production, many of them — Dancing Queen — so familiar that audience members leaving singing. Even little skiff is named "Waterloo".
