Canberra is rarely even included on the national touring circuit for musicals, but on Thursday Canberra Theatre Centre will roll out the red carpet for the national premier of Mamma Mia!
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Filled with a score of songs from Swedish pop group Abba, the musical has toured the world and been seen by tens of millions of people since its premier in London in 1999.
Mamma Mia! is running for just over three weeks - a very long season by Canberra standards - and Canberra Theatre Centre director Bruce Carmichael said tickets were selling well.
"It's selling so strongly, in fact it's very close to being sold out. It's the highest selling performing arts that I'm aware of in Canberra to date and certainly in this theatre, for one season," he said.
"And we need to sell this many tickets for shows of this calibre to keep coming here."
The first Canberra season of the musical is the culmination of more than two years of discussions between Mr Carmichael, the ACT government, Visit Canberra and the show's co-producer Louise Withers.
Ms Withers, who has worked on all three Australian productions of Mamma Mia!, said bringing the show to Canberra was about putting the national capital on the radar of larger productions, and showing that there is a market for them.
"Together we decided that this was a great opportunity to give Canberrans a chance to have the first premier, to give themselves a boogie and have a great time," she said.
"We'll probably play to about 30,000 people over these three and a half weeks and that's fantastic. And I think if Canberrans want more shows to come of this scale, because this is certainly a very big show to start in Canberra, then they have to frequent the theatre, they have to support it."
Mr Carmichael said the strength of tickets sales for the season means, "we've got a number of follow-ups in the pipeline," but that the theatre size is an ongoing issue.
"We're always going to have to be cajoling them into coming with an auditorium of this size with 1200 seats. It's the same cost for producers to do a performance in a theatre with 1200 seats as it is with 2000 seats," he said.
"I'm really thrilled that we're getting up to capacity, and that really means there is a strong business case for a new theatre."
Mamma Mia! is on at Canberra Theatre Centre until December 17. canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
