Oh Mamma!

The women bringing the music of Abba out of the theatre and on to cinema screens all agree their job was made easier because of the infectious Mamma Mia! factor, finds Sylviane Gold

THERE'S a lot of noise and flash in Mamma Mia! – both the original stage musical and the film adaptation. But the three women responsible for both seemed restrained enough as they sat down to what one of them called "a proper English tea" in New York recently.

They weren't wearing rhinestone-studded satin jumpsuits – though the scriptwriter, Catherine Johnson, sported traces of magenta in her hair and a dress emblazoned with Elvis portraits. They weren't shrieking and emitting gales of laughter (though the director, Phyllida Lloyd, stopped midsentence to utter a breathy "Wow!" at the arrival of the lemon curd and clotted cream). They didn't burst into Abba hits at every opportunity, though the co-producer, Judy Craymer, allowed herself to quote briefly from Fernando.

But like the women who star in the jukebox musical built around the irresistible tunes and lyrics of Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the three, all 50, radiated a spirit of fun and camaraderie that they call "the Mamma Mia! factor." It's undoubtedly part of the reason that their show has been playing to packed houses across Britain since 1999 and on Broadway for the past seven years. There have been hit productions around the world and now the Mamma Mia! factor is hitting cinemas, with Meryl Streep rocking out as Donna, the former leader of a 1970s pop act, and Christine Baranski and Julie Walters as the Dynamos, her backing singers.

In the story that Johnson fashioned to fit some of Abba's catchiest numbers, Donna and the Dynamos regroup on a Greek island, where Donna now runs an inn, to sing the old songs and celebrate the impending marriage of Donna's daughter, Sophie. Also on hand for the party, invited by Sophie because she believes one of them to be her father, are three of Donna's former lovers (played by Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård).

With the worldwide success of the original show, the high-profile cast and the multigenerational Abba fanbase, Mamma Mia! would seem to have huge box-office potential. But success is far from guaranteed: there was Chicago, but there was also The Producers. And Craymer, Lloyd and Johnson are all newcomers to film.

They're not worried. Craymer says she knew "slightly more" about what she was doing as producer of the stage show. But she wasn't about to entrust a film – which had been her idea originally – to anybody else: "I feel I'm very much the gatekeeper on all things Mamma Mia! I felt it was incredibly important to control the rights and to control the project."

She did join ranks with Universal Pictures, but even Donna Langley, the studio's powerful president for production, deferred to the power of the Mamma Mia! factor.

"The confidence we put in Phyllida, Catherine and Judy," Langley says, "was largely due to the fact that they had lived and breathed Mamma Mia! with the stage show for 10 years. They understand what it is and why it works."

Having three women in the top roles of scriptwriter, director and producer makes Mamma Mia! a rarity in the film industry. According to Terry Lawler, the executive director of industry forum New York Women in Film and Television, women directed only 6 per cent of the top 250 films last year and wrote only 10 per cent. Some 50 of those films listed no women at all among the main credits.

Craymer says she wasn't trying to make a feminist point when she enlisted Johnson and Lloyd to help realise her notion of an Abba musical, or when she started hiring people for the film. But somehow, as she sought to fill the movie crew with others who "got" the Mamma Mia! factor, she ended up with even more women, including the production designer, the costume designer and the editor.

Lloyd reminds Craymer of something that happened when they first started thinking about the show: "I remember you saying that you asked Benny and Björn what they felt about having a woman director, and they actually said they actively liked collaborating with women."

Streep, in a separate interview, also remarks that the set was an uncommonly happy one and that Mamma Mia! was "fun every single day".

And she credits Lloyd with setting the tone on Mamma Mia! "She has a really gentle way with the command position," Streep reveals. "I told her she reminded of me of Clint Eastwood – real quiet, but real strong."

Lloyd says her equanimity on the set came partly from her experience directing opera. "In a big opera with a huge chorus, you might have 200 people," she points out, suggesting keeping order now comes more easily. But, she adds: "We were fantastically well prepared. Catherine and I had really, really worked to own every visual detail of it."

Still, not everything went according to plan: they had to drop kung fu from a number in which Baranski romps with a crowd of young men, when it became clear just teaching the guys the dance steps would be enough of a challenge. And a fantasy sequence hit trouble when it looked as though bad weather would delay the arrival of the rented yacht – it was saved when Streep suggested that they borrow the boat being used by Andersson and his family.

Streep's willingness to take on the role of Donna, Craymer says, was critical to capturing the Mamma Mia! factor: "It's about real women …"

"Not wanting to glamorise," Johnson adds, finishing the sentence. "Not wanting to say, 'Yes, OK, I live on an island, but surely I might wear something really tasteful and designery.' Meryl embraces that Donna would have dirt under her fingernails."

But Mamma Mia! is essentially a fantasy, and Lloyd didn't shy away from that. So, when Donna and the Dynamos lead the female population of a Greek village down a mountainside, frolicking to Dancing Queen, Lloyd included a funny but very unlikely moment: a Greek wife drops the bundle of sticks she is carrying for her husband and gaily joins the dance.

• Mamma Mia! goes on general release from Friday.