‘I thought I’d do a year and leave,” says Sara Poyzer, who played mother Donna in the Abba musical Mamma Mia! “But the things I gained outweighed the things I lost.” She ended up staying in the part for an entire decade, even performing in front of two Abba members and at the show’s 20th anniversary, before leaving in January 2024.
Among all the glitzy new openings in London’s West End, there are a sturdy cohort of shows that seem to have just always been there. Audiences still seem to be delighted by The Lion King, now in its 26th year, and other long-running hits – but what’s it like for the actors like Poyzer, who play the same part seven or eight times a week, year after year? Does it become a groundhog day on the boards? And how do they keep their performances – and the shows – fresh?
