Walking into the Winter Garden Theatre this week to see the new revival of “Mamma Mia!,” I suddenly found myself back on Oct. 18, 2001. I was there at the Winter Garden then not as a critic but a theater reporter who had already written a lot about 9/11 and its devastating effect on the theater in New York City. Box office figures had plummeted and a few shows had closed. “Urinetown,” which opened that September, had to re-stage a scene where a character fell from the top of a tall building, and in early October, Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren opened in August Strindberg’s “Dance of Death,” a title that sent people rushing away from the box office. The money-losing revival clocked in just over 100 performances.
“Mamma Mia!” was another story, having been a big hit in London. Here was a feel-good show that recycled a bunch of songs by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, and asked nothing more of us than to be entertained and forget all our troubles, which continued to feel downright apocalyptic. The Broadway community needed a hit and even the critic at the New York Times had to comply by repeating his female date’s positive take on the show. What Ben Brantley really thought of “Mamma Mia!,” no one ever knew from that carefully crafted money review.
The “Mamma Mia!” that opened Thursday at the Winter Garden is a touring production, and at intermission I was not thinking of the recently destroyed World Trade Center. I went much further back, to the 1970s when vanity productions like “Angel,” “Doctor Jazz,” “Got tu Go Disco” and “Platinum” took up their brief residences on the Rialto among now-classic shows by Sondheim, Kander & Ebb and Lloyd Webber. The current “Mamma Mia!” remains under the control of its original director, Phyllida Lloyd; production designer, Mark Thompson; and other creatives. Frankly, the show looks so tacky that it could be the original 2001 production with a not-very-good paint job.
The songs by Andersson and Ulvaeus have never had much to do with Catherine Johnson’s book about a bride-to-be who invites three men to her wedding, thinking that one of them may be her father. Generally, the first line of songs like “S.O.S.” and “The Winner Takes It All” have something to do with that story, and then the lyrics go off in another direction. That disconnection bothered me back in 2001. Now, I was just relieved that the actors were singing and not reciting lines from Johnson’s book, which failed to elicit more than a few isolated giggles at the preview performance I attended. Most of the big laughs come from some slapstick business, like the chorus boys wearing swim flippers.
I missed the eye candy of Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard, the three possible inseminators from the 2008 movie. On stage, in the Brosnan role of Sam, Victor Wallace emotes enough for a dozen actors. It’s contagious. After intermission, Amy Weaver’s bride and Christine Sherrill’s mother-of-the-bride also caught his overacting bug.
As the mother’s sidekick friends, Jalynn Steele and Carly Sakolove manage to rise above the dispiriting mess around them.
“Mamma Mia!” opens Thursday and runs through Feb 1, 2026.
