As the beloved musical celebrates 25 years on the stage, its all-female creative team recall how everyone – even ABBA – doubted them
Kate Graham as Tanya, Mazz Murray as Donna & Nicola-Dawn Brook as Rosie in Mamma Mia! doesn’t exist. The fizzy, frothy musical, which tells the story of a mother, a daughter, and her three possible dads – a classical Shakespearean tale set to disco tunes, as its directoritself.
It took Catherine Johnson a little while to see the genius in Craymer’s idea, too. She’d made a name for herself writing plays for the Bush Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic, but by the mid-90s “I had no money”, she recalls. “And I called my agent up and said: ‘I’m absolutely desperate.’” A little while later, he rang her back with two propositions: a writing job on the children’s TV show– her young children were fans.
“There were so many clever things that Catherine did, some of which have gone unrewarded or unnoticed,” says Lloyd. “She used a Shakespearean structure, a classical structure, where you’ve got all these lost souls coming to this island. The whole thing takes place in 24 hours, which is again very classical.”
Soon though, she decided she would do it, and she would do it with all the gusto with which she was currently directing Wagner. “People said to me, ‘How can you do this when you’re doing opera?’ As if this was sort of silly frolics,” she says. “But it wasn’t.” In fact, it had more in common with the Ring Cycle than you might think. “These are two stories about people who don’t know who their parents are.
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