![]() ![]() My brief to Catherine was that no lyrics could change, the story should be a contemporary, ironic, romantic comedy and that if she listened carefully to ABBA’s songs, she’d notice how they fell into two different generations: the slightly younger, playful songs like ‘Honey, Honey’ and ‘Dancing Queen’, and the more mature, emotional songs such as ‘The Winner Takes It All’ and ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’.and so the idea of a cross-generational love story was devised.īy the end of that year Catherine had finished the first draft of MAMMA MIA!’s script and I persuaded Phyllida Lloyd to come on board as our director. We met in January 1997 and soon I was confidently telling Björn that we had found our writer and that my co-producer Richard East and I had commissioned her to write the story. I was aware of her work as a playwright and, even better, I knew her agent. let’s see what happens”.Ī year later I was on location with a film I was producing when the director mentioned Catherine Johnson. Björn said, “If you can find the right writer and story, well. I may have driven my neighbours to despair but as time passed I became more and more certain of my idea. So I sat on the floor of my apartment listening to ABBA late into the night. They weren’t 100% convinced at the time, but they didn’t absolutely close the door so I took hope. I explained that the project I had in mind would focus on a new and exciting story it wouldn’t be a tribute show, or the ‘ABBA Story’, but a truly original ‘book’ musical. The lyrics revealed a roller coaster story of love and loss that struck me as extraordinarily theatrical, but how was I to bring this to life?įirst I had to approach Benny and Björn, who were understandably a little unsure of my intentions. I was working for Sir Tim Rice at the time, who was collaborating with Benny and Björn on his musical Chess, and I was immediately smitten – after all, these were the men who had written ‘Dancing Queen’, one of the greatest pop songs of all time – but it was another of their songs, ‘The Winner Takes It All’, that first suggested to me the potential of an original musical using Benny and Björn’s classic compositions. ![]() The story begins more than 25 years ago when I first met Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, the songwriting geniuses behind ABBA. MAMMA MIA! a truly original musical MAMMA MIA!’s creator Judy Craymer tells how this magnificent record-breaking musical first triumphed in London and then conquered the world.Īs Creative Producer of MAMMA MIA!, my job started long before any script had been written. ![]()
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