TDF Stages

Victor Wallace returns to Broadway in the ABBA jukebox musical that launched his career

Victor Wallace is a real super trooper when it comes to Mamma Mia! Over the past 22 years, the charming actor has played many roles in multiple productions of the beloved musical rom-com set to ABBA's pop catalog. Now the show is back on Broadway for a limited engagement at its original home, the Winter Garden Theatre. It also marks a return to Broadway for Wallace, who made his Main Stem debut in Mamma Mia! back in 2012 and stayed on through closing.

After two-plus decades of smash productions around the globe and a hit 2008 movie starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia! is familiar to most folks. For the uninitiated, the screwball musical centers on Donna, the fiercely independent single mom of 20-year-old Sophie, who's about to marry her boyfriend Sky at her mother's hotel on an idyllic Greek isle. As the wedding approaches, Sophie decides to invite three of her mom's exes to attend, hoping that one is the father she's never met. Chaos, comedy and catchy numbers ensue.

Wallace's journey with Mamma Mia! began in 2003 when he was cast as Sky in the Las Vegas production at Mandalay Bay. "I really didn't know much about the show, but I had always loved ABBA," he recalls. "I grew up listening to their albums on the radio and on vinyl. It was kind of like the soundtrack of my very early childhood. So I went to an open call in LA and got it."

Wallace spent two years with the show before moving on to other projects. Then in 2008 he got an unexpected call: the creative team of Mamma Mia! in Vegas wanted to see him for the dads.

"It seemed a little ludicrous to me," Wallace says with a laugh. "I was too young to have a 20-year-old daughter. But they gave me Sam Carmichael," the dashing architect who broke Donna's heart 21 years earlier when he ended their love affair to marry another woman. "Sam was a role I definitely knew I wanted to play one day, but I hadn't expected to play it so soon—it was just three years after I had played Sky!"

After the Vegas mounting closed in 2009, Wallace relocated to New York City and "struggled for a while. I did a few cruise ships. But in 2012, I was invited to be part of the ensemble of Mamma Mia! on Broadway. I covered different roles. At the very end, they bumped me up into the role of Sam. To close the show on Broadway in 2015 was such an amazing gift. That put a nice little bow on my journey. I never considered it would come back around."

But it's fitting it did, since beyond being a frothy crowd-pleaser, Mamma Mia! is all about the power of reconnection. "The show always seems to come into my life when I need it," Wallace says. "Going back on tour with the show as Sam was the first big gig I got since the pandemic shutdown." It's that touring production—not a revival but a remounting of the original directed by Phyllida Lloyd—that's running on Broadway through February 1, 2026.

Wallace credits Mamma Mia! associate director Martha Banta, who's been with the show for decades, with always bringing him back. In fact, she was the one who initially thought of him for Sam. "I worked with Victor on another piece after he played Sky," she says. "I was the artistic director of the Adirondack Theater Festival in upstate New York, and he was cast in a new musical we were working on [The Girl in the Frame in summer 2005]. So I had seen him do something that wasn't Sky, and that stuck with me. When the time came to recast Sam, I asked to bring him in. Both Sam and Donna are withholding from each other throughout the whole show. They're yearning for one another but also arguing. I need actors who can play those two things at once and make it believable, so you root for them as a couple. Otherwise, Sam can come off as sort of a jerk!"

Both Wallace and Banta are excited that Mamma Mia! is back on Broadway after a ten-year hiatus, and audiences seem to be, too. So far, it's sold out every performance and is particularly popular with mothers and daughters, who come decked out in boas and sing along gleefully to "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia" during the curtain call.

The timing is smart: The original production opened a month after 9/11 and was immediately embraced for its uplifting spirit. Now it returns in a moment of polarized politics and social turmoil. "I think people gravitate toward it and need it," Wallace says. "It's a sort of escape, but also a reminder of our humanity and how we love each other, our friends and our family."

Banta agrees. "It's just such an enjoyable night at the theatre. Audiences feel a sense of nostalgia for the past with all the craziness that's going on in the world right now. It's absolutely comforting in that way. It's a warm embrace from the stage."

For Wallace, like his character Sam, Mamma Mia! is a chance to reconsider his past. "The first time I played the role in 2008, I didn't have the perspective, really, I had to fake it," he says. "I have age and wisdom now, and some of the lines hit so differently, like when my character refers to having been on the island 21 years ago—it's just so perfect, because I started with the show 22 years ago. I feel like I'm bringing my life experiences to this role. I'm not a father, but I certainly feel more like a paternal figure than I did back then—especially working with all these kids in the cast!"

He's also glad to be on Broadway with costars he knows so well. "This cast is stellar," he says. "It's such a solid singing group, and I do love that we've been on tour for a while together. When you're working on Broadway, people just kind of come into work and leave at night, they have their own lives. On tour, you're forced to be family. So there is a special bond that we all have, especially with my scene partner, Christine Sherrill as Donna," who's making her Broadway debut in the production. "We're all friends offstage and I think that translates onstage. That does lend itself to the message of this show."

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