Mamma Mia is Musical at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas

Mamma Mia is Musical at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas

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MAMMA MIA! is currently the most successful musical in the 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 the music of ABBA? Is it the story? Or is it just hype?

To find the answer to that question I saw MAMMA MIA! at the Mandalay Bay Theater at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on February, 2004. The show had just celebrated its one year anniversary and had been voted the #1 Show in Las Vegas by local news pundits. So much positive press along with kudos from friends made the 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 the tone for the play which is set on a tiny Greek island where a wedding is about to take place. As the advertisements proclaim: It is a story about a mom, a daughter, and three possible dads.

Producer Judy Craymer is credited with having the vision to take ABBA's music and find the right people to construct a musical. She says, "I knew from the 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 the music and provide a strong feel-good factor." It was while working as Executive Producer on the West End production of CHESS that she met Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. This was the team's first post-ABBA venture and the show was not a hit.

After the 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