When Christine Sherrill got the call that she was going to play Donna in the 25th anniversary national tour of Mamma Mia!, she was teaching algebra. A longtime actor, Sherrill also has a master's in education, which means when she wasn’t performing, she was in a classroom.
“I was teaching algebra in a fifth grade classroom, and so my phone was on Do Not Disturb,” she recalls with a chuckle. That means that when her agent left her a message saying she had gotten the job, she didn’t see it for five days. But it also speaks to how relaxed Sherrill was about the whole thing—very unbothered, very Donna.
In fact, Sherrill is something of a Mamma Mia! expert. Not only has she played Donna in the Mamma Mia! national tour since October 2023, she also played Donna in a 2014 engagement in London, and Tanya in a 2006 tour. And now she’s taken Donna and her Dynamo pants to Broadway and the Winter Garden Theatre, where the show opens August 14.
And at 54 years old, Sherrill is making her Broadway debut, something she never set out to do—as an actor whose career was based out of Chicago and who was perfectly happy teaching math in addition to acting. As she remarks, from her home in Chicago weeks before Mamma Mia! began rehearsals on Broadway: “My husband and I have always said, it's like being struck by lightning, it's not something that's really common, and it's certainly not something that's really common for somebody my age. So I’m just crazy grateful.”
Mamma Mia! first debuted in 1999 in the West End, immediately becoming a hot ticket. It then opened on Broadway in 2001, where it ran for 12 years. The show, with a book by Catherine Johnson and score by the pop group ABBA, has also inspired two feature films starring Meryl Streep, and became a worldwide phenomenon. Now the show is back on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre, the same theatre where it first premiered in America. And for this revival, 20 members of the cast are making their Broadway debut, not only the show’s Donna but also its Sophie, newcomer Amy Weaver.
The young actor first joined the Mamma Mia! tour as an understudy before being promoted to Sophie full-time. Though to see her and Sherrill together, with their similar wide smiles and wavy, dirty blonde hair, they truly do look like mother and daughter. Says Weaver: “We keep getting that, which I take it as, ‘Hello, Christine is beautiful.’ I have no problem looking like her.”
But on the road, Sherrill (who is a mother of three) has also become a momma bear to the rest of the cast, giving them tips for how to sustain a long touring schedule. Recalls Weaver: “I remember, in our rehearsals [during the tour], talking with Christine and just talking about being away from our loved ones for so long…I said, ‘How are we going to do this?’ And she said, 'One day at a time, one city at a time.' So that's what we did.”
Adds Sherrill: “Amy and I are sort of similar in that we need our routines and all of our creature comforts. We can travel with two suitcases, and you better believe I saved weight in my second suitcase for my Nespresso because I could not go to another hotel and have hotel coffee. So I traveled with a freaking Nespresso every week.” Her family also came to see her every four weeks.
But having performed around the country, to raucous crowds, has taken some of the pressure off of this Broadway debut. This Donna and Sophie know that their performance, and their dynamic onstage, works. Weaver notes that she’s had over 600 Mamma Mia! performances under her belt. “This feels like a big step to make your Broadway debut, and so to have that many runs under my belt, and then to be taken to New York, to the places that I live—it's really comforting to have a bunch of runs first.”
These two actors spoke with Playbill before they began performances in New York. But now that the run has started, audiences have been more than ready to welcome the show back to Broadway. Last week, the show made $1.7 million in seven performances (instead of the usual eight). Then again, there’s a reason that for the past 25 years, there’s been some version of Mamma Mia! running somewhere around the globe.
Mamma Mia! may be known for its score of hit ABBA songs, but to Sherrill, the heart of Mamma Mia! is its story of a young girl trying to find her family. “I've done a lot of jukebox musicals, and this one is just different. I think the most important part of this whole story is Sophie looking for her identity,” says Sherrill.
To her, the line in the show when Donna tells Sophie that her own mother abandoned her strikes an intensely personal chord. “I was an adoptee. There's a lot of things that happen to Sophie within the story, where she says, ‘I want to know who I am and where I came from’—I have been on that journey my whole life, figuring out where I came from…And we're at a place now where folks aren't comfortable finding their identity, they don't feel 100 percent supported. And it's a story that means a lot to me.”
To Weaver, the heart of the musical is the mother-and-daughter story, two women living life on their own terms, running their own business, and creating their own nontraditional family. “Donna and Sophie are fiercely independent women. And I think that is important right now to see on stage, and for other women to see that, to see [the characters] speak up for themselves,” says Weaver. “Something that I love about Sophie is that she really does speak up for herself. I think that's one of my biggest takeaways from being able to be Sophie every night, is that it's really important to advocate for yourself. And as women, it can be really hard sometimes.”
Weaver’s comments inspire Sherrill to chime in, tears in her eyes: “Amy has become a woman in the last year, like coming into this role and being a principal and asking for what she needs, and telling me what she needs. Amy used to never call out. And now she's like me: 'My body needs to rest, I need to take [time off].' And I'm like, 'Yes, yes!’”
Perhaps that’s why Mamma Mia! has continued to resonate with audiences for so long. Because for all of the familiar toe-tapping songs in the show, the story is also one of living life unapologetically on your own terms: Donna never apologizes for not knowing who the father of her child is. Sophie discovers family isn’t just blood, it’s also who you choose. And to Sherrill, this intense love that the audiences have for the show is what’s inspired her to return to the material again and again.
“I just feel this obligation to give back the energy that they were giving to us. We never went into a city where [the audience] weren't giving us 150% of their energy,” Sherrill says while Weaver nods in agreement. “And I just feel like a great responsibility in that, especially because in recent times, this joy is needed…I think you get permission by watching this play that you can be authentically and unapologetically yourself. That’s the story. It’s not fluffy, it's important.”
And Weaver has specific advice for anyone attending Mamma Mia! on Broadway, exclaiming with her arms outstretched: “Let everything go and be present. Release your inhibitions, be present in the moment, and just have the time of your life.”
Lena Owens, Amy Weaver, and Haley Wright in Mamma Mia!
Christine Sherrill and company of Mamma Mia!
Jim Newman, Victor Wallace, and Rob Marnell in Mamma Mia!
Jalynn Steele, Carly Sakolove, and Christine Sherrill in Mamma Mia!
Grant Reynolds and Amy Weaver in Mamma Mia!
Grant Reynolds and company of Mamma Mia!
Jalynn Steele, Christine Sherrill, and Carly Sakolove in Mamma Mia!
Company of Mamma Mia!
Justin Sudderth, Jalynn Steele, and company of Mamma Mia!
Amy Weaver and Christine Sherrill in Mamma Mia!
Company of Mamma Mia!
Grant Reynolds and Amy Weaver in Mamma Mia!
Amy Weaver and company of Mamma Mia!
Jalynn Steele, Christine Sherrill, Carly Sakolove, and company of Mamma Mia!
Christine Sherrill in Mamma Mia!
