'This feels good': Why Theatre Tuscaloosa chose to return with 'Mamma Mia!'

Stephen Tyler Davis' first directing job for Theatre Tuscaloosa, the July 2019 revisit to "Grease," scored a hit for the company, not just via butts-in-seats rubrics, but in cast and audience goodwill and thrills.

The summer lovin' team planned to roll again, like greased lightning, the next year. Davis, the one that they wanted, would revisit from New York, where he'd been working, living, studying — earning his theater master of fine arts degree at Sarah Lawrence College, and later joining its faculty — since graduating from the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance in 2007.

For that next turn, Davis was to become hopelessly devoted to another earlier-era pop-rock nostalgia show, the ABBA-based "Mamma Mia!" But when the COVID-19 pandemic roared down, postponement became the name of the game.

"Yeah, we were all set to get the gang back together," he said, "and then the world shut down."

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Now three years post-"Grease," following more than two years of anticipation, Theatre Tuscaloosa turns its super troupers toward the Bean-Brown Theatre stage for its finally realized "Mamma Mia!"

The romantic comedy was crafted by British playwright Catherine Johnson, built around the songs of the Swedish pop phenomenon, most of them written by the B-males in the group, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.

Many of their hits were written about, and chiefly sung by the two As, their respective former life partners, Anna-Frid Lyngstad, and Agnetha Fältskog. Together as an acronymic unit, that quartet became Sweden's first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, with the bouncy "Waterloo" — chosen as the competition's best song of its first 50 years, during a 2005 celebration — and danced on from that success, bursting through worldwide charts for the next decade.

Each of their discs sold platinum status or above, for an estimated 385 million worldwide, but it's the collection "ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits," released in 1992, that became ubiquitous, selling six times platinum in the U.S. alone. Its sales ran above 30 million, making it the 15th-best-selling disc of all time. Worldwide, ABBA stands third in most singles sold — 11 million, from 25 Top 10 hits, including nine No. 1s  — behind the Beatles and Queen.

Though breaking up is never easy, we know, the band split in 1982, personally and professionally, though the men continue to write together, while the women have pursued solo singing careers. All four came together again in 2018 to record new songs, and in May of this year, announced ABBA Voyage, a series of virtual concerts featuring a 10-piece live band performing with digitally-created avatars of the group as it appeared in its heyday. A new album, "Voyage," is due out in November.

ABBA's songs have stayed alive long past the actual band's run, through oldies stations, tribute bands, prominent covers, and placement in movies such as "Muriel’s Wedding" and "Priscilla – Queen Of The Desert."

Keeping ABBA golden

The savvy ongoing marketing and repackaging that's kept ABBA golden soared to another pinnacle when producer Judy Craymer, having met the men while they were working with lyricist Tim Rice on musical "Chess," commissioned British playwright Johnson to craft a book around the songs.

The original London production opened in 1999, where it's the sixth-longest running show in West End history. "Mamma Mia!" opened on Broadway in 2001 and ran 14 years, becoming the ninth-longest running Broadway show. Counting international tourings, more than 65 million people have seen the show live, amassing more than $4 billion in ticket sales.

A 2008 film adaptation, starring Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Christine Baranski, Stellan Skarsgård and Julie Walters, grossed more than $612 million worldwide, leading to the 2018 sequel, "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again," which grossed more than $400 million.

Johnson framework is a trip to a Greek island, where Sophie (Reagan Branch, in Theatre Tuscaloosa's production), a young woman about to be married to Sky (Sam Allen), travels to visit her mom, Donna (Jamie Shannon Ferguson Ertle). Sophie had recently read Donna's diary, recounting a years-ago series of affairs with three men, any of whom might be Sophie's biological father.

Donna owns and operates a restaurant on the island, though she and two of her friends — Rosie, played by Brandy Johnson, and Tanya, played by Lindsey Jones — used to perform as a singing trio, which abets bursting-into-melody moments. Unbeknownst to Donna, Sophie has invited all three potential dads, Sam (Steven Yates), Bill (Bradley Logan) and Harry (John Walker), hoping to suss out which might walk her down the aisle.

Sweet home Alabama

It's been a crazy world for Davis since 2019. Earlier this year, Huntsville's Fantasy Playhouse Children's Theatre and Academy hired him as its new artistic director, so he'll be moving back to the city where he grew up. He begins Aug. 1, but so far this summer he's been spending more time in Tuscaloosa, working on this 31-cast show, not counting the band, and pit choir (off-stage singers).

"I kind of dropped a bunch of stuff off at my parents' garage. I did buy a new house, but I haven't even moved in yet," he said.

During shut-down phases of the pandemic, he worked, partially remotely, in both Alabama and New York, then did another full year at Sarah Lawrence.

"And I was like, you know what, Alabama, I'm ready to go home," he said, missing the food, friends, and family. The Huntsville company is one he grew up performing with, and it's in the process of a major expansion, including a new multi-million-dollar facility.

"I have new nieces, and my grandma, who's like my best friend, is getting older, so you know what? I'm ready to settle down, put some roots down," he said.

Much of the crew from "Grease" returns, including Davis' old friend and fellow UA grad Lindsay Trockler Soha as choreographer, with Leslie Poss again as music director, Erin Hisey again setting the lights, and Ava Kuchera Buchanan back to work magic behind-the-scenes on hair and makeup, as the cast sometimes must be shown as contemporary, and at other times reveling in styles from youth.

"Like the second weekend of 'Grease,' we realized how much fun we had had together, and that doesn't always happen when you're in the middle of artistic collaborations," Davis said.

"(Executive producer Tina F. Turley) was like, 'This feels good. Let's do it again.' Basically, we decided in the hallway of the Shelton State that we were gonna do it, and so that's why it's been on hold, a very kind of sacred summer, wherever it may fall on my calendar."

Though some of the "Mamma Mia!" cast had also worked in "Grease," including Walker, Meredith Vaughn, Colton Crowe, Cole Cabiness and Audrey-Reagan Thompson, most of these performers were new to Davis. He had seen Jones in "Bright Star" with Tuscaloosa's The Actor's Charitable Theatre the year before, though, and remembered her "shining."

"The world needs like this injection of joy right now," Jones said, "and 'Mamma Mia!' is just fun; it's not deep."

Logan has become a regular with the company, from "A Christmas Carol" through "Once Upon a Mattress," and most recently, to the door-slamming farce "Girls' Weekend."

"This whole show's about family, and about finding your family," he said. "Coming back to theater after everything, and being away from it, especially here at Theatre Tuscaloosa, because it is like a family out here, coming back and seeing faces, and adding faces to our family, it's been really refreshing."

Ertle was recently paired with Logan in the comedy "Girls' Weekend," but she thrives on song, having studied musical theater at Mississippi College, and earned her master of fine arts in the same at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

"When there's a musical audition, I'm there and I'm just crossing my fingers, hoping I get something," she said.

Donna, whether with her former singing partners, the potential dads, her daughter or others of the company, is central to many of the scenes and songs, including some best-loved hits such as "Dancing Queen," "SOS," the title song. Ertle also takes on a pair of heartbreakers from the stages of ABBA's dissolution, "The Winner Takes It All," and "One of Us."

Flashy fun

Despite the high-pop sheen often associated with ABBA, emotional layers show through. It may begin with the bounce of "Honey Honey," romp through "Voulez-Vous" and "Dancing Queen," but it then dives down to deal with heartaches, before rebounding to resolution and spandex party time.

"It's this mashup of all of these different experiences and these different generations, all set to a soundtrack of a different time," Davis said. "I feel like this is the show that like everybody has some sort of way into, like more than any other thing I've ever worked on, really.

"It's like a classic 'don't reinvent the wheel; give the people what they want,' and I feel like that's really what we've landed at. You know, the movie is a little different in that it gets to do more like cinematic, flashy things. But I like to think that we've added our own little layer of flashy fun."

Excitement has run high, said Adam Miller, the company's managing director, such that Theatre Tuscaloosa added a Tuesday night performance to accommodate demand. There may be a few seats remaining for weekend shows, he said, but patrons should check in soon.

'Mamma Mia' dates and tickets

"Mamma Mia!" begins at 7:30 Friday, with evening performances also on Saturday, Tuesday, and July 21-22. The 2 p.m. matinees will be performed Sunday, and July 20, 23 and 24.

All will be in the Bean-Brown Theatre, at Theatre Tuscaloosa's home in Shelton State Community College, 9500 Old Greensboro Road. Tickets are $24 general, $20 for seniors and members of the military, and $16 for students and children. For more, call 205-391-2277, or see www.theatretusc.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Theatre Tuscaloosa launches ABBA's 'Mamma Mia!' after pandemic pause