Sequins! Dancing queens! ABBA! Go backstage for 'Mamma Mia!s' 25th anniversary tour at the Ahmanson

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Set us as preferred Here we go again: Twenty-five years after “Mamma Mia!” premiered on Broadway, the national tour returns to Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre with show-stopping set pieces and a crew that knows the show inside and out.The beloved jukebox musical, which chronicles a Greek wedding with three potential fathers of the bride, has taken over the Ahmanson through July 19 as part of its 25th anniversary tour, and audience members should expect a full-on ABBA sing-along dance party.“People come dressed up,” said associate choreographer Janet Rothermel.“There’s a lot of boas, and there’s a lot of spandex, and platform shoes.”Rothermel is one of many people on the creative team who have worked on the show since its original Broadway run in 2001.

Associate director Martha Banta and associate music supervisor David Holcenberg have also seen the musical through its nearly 14-year original Broadway run, national tours and numerous international iterations (Holcenberg was its original music director).“When we were all back together again in rehearsal, it was an extraordinary feeling,” Banta said.“Not with the same cast, but Janet, David and I and others that have done it for years.

With everything that’s been going on in the world in the last three years, it was just a soothing thing to do.”“We’ve just been embraced beyond what we were used to, which was pretty great,” she added.Everyone involved in the production echoed a similar sentiment: that the “ultimate feel-good musical” is exactly what audiences want to see during painful or overwhelming times.The show’s traveling costume supervisor and associate designer Eva Maciek put it most bluntly: “I love working on it because nobody dies.”Rehearsals for the original Broadway run coincided with the Sept.

11 terrorist attacks, Holcenberg explained, and he was struck by audience members’ emotional responses to the ...