Review: Mamma Mia! Returns to Broadway

Critics perform a kind of theater too: stroking our chins, dispassionately taking notes, and steadfastly refusing to stand for the now ubiquitous curtain call. We wouldn’t want to betray our true feelings until the review posts, would we? And yet there I found myself at the Winter Garden, stone-faced yet involuntarily tapping my left foot to “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” Such is the seductive power of ABBA and Mamma Mia!, which has returned to Broadway 24 years after its debut, and a decade after the end of its blockbuster initial run.

Jukebox musicals come and go, but none has achieved the level of success of Mamma Mia!, which remains the gold standard for the kind of show in which a flimsy plot is devised around a preexisting song catalog. And as this perfectly adequate revival proves, that success is entirely about presenting delightful songs in an attractive, form-fitting package.

Like all great comedies, Mamma Mia! is set around a wedding. It’s 1999 and 20-year-old Sophie (Amy Weaver) is marrying reformed financier Sky (Grant Reynolds) on the small Greek island where her expat mother, Donna (Christine Sherrill), runs a taverna. She would love her father to walk her down the aisle, if only she knew who he was. After reading mom’s diary from the ’70s, she narrows the field down to three: Could it be architect Sam Carmichael (Victor Wallace)? Or swashbuckling writer Bill Austin (Jim Newman)? What about wealthy English banker Harry Bright (Rob Marnell)? Sophie invites them all to the wedding without Donna’s consent. Comic high jinks, set to an irresistible disco beat, ensue.

Book writer Catherine Johnson is heavily indebted to Shakespeare for this ultra-contrived plot, which is really just the lubricant for a parade of hits by Swedish song mages Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the kind of timeless melodies one can imagine a longboat of Vikings singing to keep the spirits up en route to pillage Pomerania. But the dramaturgically shrewd setting of a wedding shows that there is an art to the jukebox musical. Few bands more successfully move both grandma and sullen teenagers to dance than ABBA, the secret weapon of all wedding DJs.

As a work of theater, Mamma Mia! sinks or floats on the broad comic performances of the actors. Jalynn Steele and Carly Sakolove lead the way as Tanya and Rosie, Donna’s best friends and former backup singers. As rich divorcée Tanya, Steele looks like she just stepped out of a casting call for And Just Like That…(it’s gone). Sakolove arms everywoman Rosie with perfect comic timing; one of the great joys of this production is watching her comment on the lyrics with her hilarious facial expressions. Both actors have us rolling in the aisle with their acrobatic physical interpretation of “Dancing Queen,” which features cramps and pulled muscles, constituting the most realistic segment in the show.

The three daddies also deliver memorable performances. Marnell captures a distinctively English awkwardness that is undeniably charming. Newman is the woofiest of the trio, making us viscerally understand Rosie’s breathless attraction. Wallace endows Sam with bedside eyes and a twinge of sadness in his singing voice. He’s like a Florida meteorologist brooding over a summer squall, a vibe that gives the second act number “SOS” a surprise emotional kick.

But no one does a better job of illuminating the real stakes in this slim plot than Sherrill, a veteran of the touring and Las Vegas productions who is making her Broadway debut. She approaches every number not like an American Idol hopeful, but as a serious actor treating every word with great care, as if they are her own (no surprise that she cut her theatrical teeth in Chicago). Her understated interpretation of “Slipping Through My Fingers” is especially moving, a private reflection of a mother braiding her daughter’s hair on her wedding day. And her performance of “The Winner Takes It All” is a master class in how to build a song from beginning to end.

Unfortunately, Sherrill doesn’t possess the raw vocal power of Mazz Murray, which means she is occasionally drowned by the orchestra in a production that, despite its age, suffers from the very 2025 problem of poor sound balance (the sound design is by Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitken, and the orchestra is conducted by Will Van Dyke). This is a shame, because Sherrill charges every lyric with meaning in a way I never suspected was possible with ABBA. The audience should get to hear that.

Director Phyllida Lloyd’s production is essentially the same one that first played the Winter Garden in October 2001, with vibrant concert lighting by Howard Harrison, clever retro choreography by Anthony Van Laast (love those boys in flippers), and whimsical costumes by Mark Thompson. Thompson’s set, which features two large moving pieces of faux Santorini stone that can be endlessly rearranged, still helps the cast tell this story with efficiency, and harks back to a time before the set design arms race really took off on Broadway.

This is not a dark Brechtian take on a well-known musical, nor a queer reclamation of mainstream pop culture—but I’m not sure anyone needs that from Mamma Mia!, a show that knows what it is and consistently delivers. When confronted with such a chronically enjoyable juggernaut, one can only say, “Thank you for the music.”