The musical, inspired by the music of Swedish pop group Abba, has tallied up a grand total 5,765 performances during its historic streak.
Friday, April 10, 2015
‘Mamma Mia’ to End on Broadway in September
The musical, inspired by the music of Swedish pop group Abba, has tallied up a grand total 5,765 performances during its historic streak.
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I think congratulation is in order for the producers behind "Mamma Mia". This production, although considered by some to artistically suffering, is a true commercial example of accomplishment in terms of theater. When I saw the show about three years ago on Broadway and the theater was full. The show had a certain charm to it that brought audiences in by the thousands. What is interesting though is that the show has been running for nearly 15 years, however it is barely breaks the lists for the top ten longest running musicals on Broadway. What’s interesting about this article is that it does not reveal why the production will be closing? The show has been so successful and I had not heard anything about the show’s popularity starting to decline so I’m curious what made the producers decide to close the show. The tour continues to run to audiences across the country so what made this show close?
Do not get me wrong Mama Mia is a fantastic Broadway musical that audiences truly love. However, just like all great things in this world, there comes a time when it just ends. For Mama Mia, as fantastic of a production as it is, it has reached that ending point, and it is time for it to close. No one will say that Mama Mia did not have a successful run on the great white way because it ran four five long years at eight shows a week to thousands of audience members. As sad as I am to see Mama Mia go, I am very happy that Broadway would be welcoming a brand spanking new show to world. Personally I feel that it is time for shows that only revivals to close because everyone has seen it before. It is time to grace the audiences of New York and the rest of the world with some new work. Maybe now is a good time!
I’ve never though much of Mama Mia, I personally don’t care for the music of Abba, and kind of always thought of the musical as more of a ridiculous production than a real show. Mama Mia has been around for quite some time, and as a New Yorker I’ve often seen ads for it around the city, but like I’ve said, I never thought much of it. Perhaps Mama Mia deserves more credit than I’ve given it, as the eight longest running Broadway show, it definitely deserves some respect if not as a classic Broadway show, than as one of the best marketing schemes to ever hit New York. With productions around the world, and a worldwide gross of over $2 Billion I can no longer just overlook Mama Mia as a ridiculous show, it has definitely made its mark on Broadway history, and did so while singing the songs of Abba. In short I’m impressed.
I’ve actually never seen Mama Mia, but I’m familiar with some of the music. I think it’s great that it had such a long run, but I’m glad that it’s over. As cool as it is for shows to have these really long runs, one of the great things about Broadway is that the shows aren’t permanent. It’s important for new shows to replace old shows; it’s the circle of life (I feel like we’re going to have The Lion King around until at least 2020). There are some shows that a lot of people don’t want to see leave Broadway, like The Lion King or Wicked or even Phantom of the Opera, but at a certain point they have to. The nice thing about them is that they are consistent shows that are great for the tourist crowd (I think some of them even have shows on Monday now for tourists), because it’s something that people know about and are pretty sure they’re going to like. I think it’s sad (sometimes) when a show I really like leaves Broadway, but it’s important for this type of change to happen. If it didn’t things would get really stale and Broadway would be more for the tourists than the people who live in New York.
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