‘Mamma Mia!’ — returning to Broadway — was a glittery boost to NYC after 9/11

My, my, how can we resist you? 

For the first time since 2013, the mega “Mamma Mia!” marquee returned to the Winter Garden Theatre on 50th Street, where it lit up the block for 12 years.

Giddy friends of mine snapped photos of the famous poster of a beaming girl in a white dress like they’d just spotted Brad Pitt. 

They’re that excited for its Aug. 2 bow.

Just one look and they can hear a bell ring! One more look and they forget everything!

You see, a simple glimpse of “Mamma Mia!,” the hit musical comedy featuring the songs of ABBA, could make even a construction worker break out into “Dancing Queen.”

And its reputation as an escape for all is a vital part of its Broadway history.

Twenty-four years ago, the then-new show lifted up New York City when it was at its lowest. “Mamma Mia!,” of all things, opened less than a month after the 9/11 attacks.

David Grindrod, the musical’s British casting director who supervised the Broadway production with Tara Rubin, remembers that awful day.

“The cast were in the midst of rehearsals, and going, ‘Oh my God. What’s happening?’,” he told me.
“We were all in a state of shock.”

They paused for a few days. But Mayor Rudy Giuliani implored producer Judy Craymer to forge on.

“There was a moment that I’m sure we said, ‘Do we cancel?’,” Grindrod said. “But in the end, that was only very short-lived. And everybody — the cast, the crew, everybody — just went, ‘We’ve got to do this for New York and for ourselves.’”

It was a chancy move.

Nowadays, nobody associates behemoth “Mamma Mia!” with risk. But, from the very beginning, the musical really was a gamble. 

Back then, a jukebox show with an entirely new plot that’s not a biography of a musician was a weird and untested idea.

When Grindrod was hired by Craymer to cast the original staging in London in 1999, he went, “Why has nobody thought of that before?”

Its smart script by Catherine Johnson is about a young bride who lives on a Greek island with a spicy single mom. Wanting her unknown dad to walk her down the aisle, she invites her mother’s three old flames from the 1970s to the wedding to uncover who her real pop is. Antics — and ABBA — ensue.

There were other hurdles.

Most musicals in London at that time, by the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, were sung-through with little to no dialogue. Actors were petrified of lines.

“They’d never been asked to actually speak in a musical audition before!,” the casting director said.

And stateside — it’s hard to believe now, but ABBA was not hugely popular. Their only No. 1 hit in the US was “Dancing Queen” in 1977. 

None of that mattered. They took a chance on “MM.” 

Londoners went gaga for “Mamma Mia!”. It’s still running there. And any fears that it might fall flat in America proved unfounded. The national tour was a boffo success.

But then came Broadway, and 9/11. Would a traumatized NYC flock to a show with bell-bottomed jumpsuits and “Super Trooper”? 

In disco-dancing droves, it turns out.

The curtain went up on “Mamma Mia!” on Oct. 5, 2001 when it played its first preview at the Winter Garden. The crowd went bonkers.

“It was very, very, very, very exciting,” Grindrod said. “There was so much love for us all.”

Even the critics laid all their love on it.

“It offers one of those nights when you sit back and let a nutty kind of joy just sweep over you,” wrote The Post’s Clive Barnes.

The Broadway production of “Mamma Mia!” made money, money, money, recouping its $10 million investment in just 28 weeks. That was lightning speed even then. It ran for 12 years at the Winter Garden, before moving to the Broadhurst for its final two — earning $600 million here.

Audiences said: Thank you for the music, and the laughs, and the break.

“When we were the first show to actually open [after 9/11], it kind of epitomized Broadway opening back up after such a terrible, terrible tragedy,” Grindrod said. 

“We were still there. Theater was still there. Theater was still going. It didn’t stop us.”