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LONDON (AP) – “ABBA Voyage” is definitely a trip.
Forty years after the Swedish pop supergroup’s last live performance, audiences can once again see ABBA on stage in an innovative digital concert where past and future collide.
The show opens to the public in London on Friday after its red carpet premiere, attended by superfans, celebrities and Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. The guests of honor were the four members of ABBA’s royal family, who made their first public appearance in years.
Still, they were in the audience. A 10-piece live support band on stage at the specially built 3,000-seat ABBA Arena next to the Olympic Park in East London, and a digital ABBA created using motion capture and other technologies by Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company founded by “Star” there was. Wars” by George Lucas.
The voices and movements are real Agnetha Faltskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad – choreographed by Wayne McGregor from Britain – but the performers on stage are inevitably digital avatars called “ABBA-tars”. In disturbingly lifelike detail, they show the band members as they appeared in the heyday of the 1970s – beards on men, flying curls on women, corduroy pants everywhere.
The result is both hi-tech and high-camp, a sparkling supernova of stun tech, 1970s nostalgia, and pop music genius.
For most viewers, watching ABBA perform classics like “Mamma Mia”, “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, “SOS” and “Dancing Queen” was almost like being taken back in time. The 90-minute peppy set also includes tracks from the band’s reunion album “Voyage,” released last year.
This is a combination of tribute action and 3D concert movie that goes beyond description. At times it was possible to forget that this was not a live performance, but a surge of live music energy rose in the arena as the backing singers stepped forward to shout “Does Your Mother Know”.
The four band members – two married couples in ABBA’s heyday, now long divorced – received enthusiastic applause when they bowed at the end of Thursday’s show, 50 years after ABBA founded and 40 years after they stopped performing live.
It must have been a strange feeling to watch someone do a younger performance, but the band members, now in their 70s, said they were very happy with the show.
“I never knew I had such great moves,” Ulvaeus said.
“I thought I was pretty good, but I’m even better,” Lyngstad said.
Ulvaeus said the audience response was the most gratifying part of the experience.
“There is an emotional connection between the avatars and the audience,” he said. “That’s what’s fantastic.”
The producers describe the show as “revolutionary”. Time will show us. Like first-time viewers to a talking feature film a century ago, attendees may leave wondering if they’re watching a play or upcoming.
Times of London commentator Will Hodgkinson described the show as “mainly an ABBA song with added sound and light show”, but called the effect “enchanting”. Writing in The Guardian, Alexis Petridis described the concert as “squeaky clean” and said: “It’s so successful it’s hard not to imagine other artists doing the same.”
Trick or genius, “ABBA Voyage” is booking in London until May 2023, with a world tour planned after that.
Fans attending Thursday’s show are delighted that ABBA is back.
“I’m so excited,” said Kristina Hagman, a Swedish fan who has been a fan since the 1970s.
“I was bullied a lot because you weren’t allowed to love ABBA back then because it was so commercial,” he said. “But now we take revenge.”
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