“Mamma Mia!” is returning to Broadway this summer after a decade away.
The big-hearted musical, which combined Abba songs and abs to become a huge hit onstage and then on film, is scheduled to start previews on Aug. 2 at the Winter Garden Theater — where it spent much of its original run. The opening date is set for Aug. 14, and the run is expected to last at least six months.
“I hope it will be a bit of an end-of-summer treat for New York,” said Judy Craymer, the British producer who initially commissioned the musical and has transformed it into a global business.
The musical’s first New York engagement, with 5,773 performances from 2001 to 2015, made it the ninth-longest-running show in Broadway history. Its 50 productions around the world, in 16 languages, have been seen by more than 70 million people and have grossed more than $7 billion, the show’s publicists said.
The musical’s mother-daughter story is set on a fictional Greek island, where family and friends have gathered for a wedding. The daughter is determined to use the occasion to figure out which among three of her mother’s ex-boyfriends is her father, whose identity she has never known.
The plot, for many fans, is largely a scaffolding for an extremely popular set of Abba tunes and a lot of upbeat dance numbers (performed by actors in exuberant, and sometimes skimpy, costumes) that prompted occasional dancing by patrons in the aisles.
“It’s the idyllic Greek holiday,” Craymer said, “and everyone wants to be on that island, cellphone free, having a fun time.”
The show opened in London in 1999, and has been running there ever since. The Broadway production opened just after the terrorist attacks of 2001, and although reviews were tepid (the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “a giant singing Hostess cupcake”), its escapist tone was a key ingredient to its success and its symbolic role in helping Broadway rebound. It sold well for years, but enthusiasm had softened by the time it closed, prompting the initial run’s end.
Among the four productions currently running is one on a cruise ship. For the last 11 years, the show has also been available for licensing by local theaters and schools where it has been staged more than 4,500 times.
“It celebrates women, it’s about second chances, it’s about hope, and it’s not political — it brings audiences together,” Craymer said. “And it has become empowering to young female audiences, definitely — that’s not to exclude the blokes, of course.”
Craymer said the stage productions have also benefited from the pair of films starring Meryl Streep, including the original, “Mamma Mia!,” released in 2008, and a combined prequel-sequel, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” released in 2018. Craymer said she is committed to making a third film — “there’s a story still to finish,” she said — but that the timing is uncertain.
“Mamma Mia!” features music and lyrics by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba; the book is by Catherine Johnson, and the director is Phyllida Lloyd.
Although the Broadway return engagement is being announced as a limited run, Craymer was noncommittal about how firm that is. “I hope that either it means we can come back again or we’ll extend further,” she said, adding that the show remains unchanged, other than some minor design tweaks. “This isn’t a secondary production or a revival,” she said. “It’s still the show.”
