Stars and royalty watch ABBA’s return in digital stage present
By Associated Press
LONDON: “ABBA Voyage” is actually a visit.
Four many years after the Swedish pop supergroup final carried out reside, audiences can as soon as once more see ABBA onstage in an modern digital live performance the place previous and future collide.
The present opens to the general public in London on Friday, the day after a red-carpet premiere attended by superfans, celebrities and Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. The visitors of honor had been pop royalty — the 4 members of ABBA, showing in public collectively for the primary time in years.
They had been within the viewers, although. Onstage on the specifically constructed 3,000-seat ABBA Arena subsequent to east London’s Olympic Park had been a 10-piece reside backing band and a digital ABBA, created utilizing movement seize and different know-how by Industrial Light and Magic, the particular results agency based by “Star Wars” director George Lucas.
The voices and actions are the true Agnetha Faltskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad — choreographed by Britain’s Wayne McGregor — however the performers onstage are digital avatars, inevitably dubbed “ABBA-tars.” In unsettlingly lifelike element, they depict the band members as they regarded of their Nineteen Seventies heyday — beards on the boys, flowing locks on the ladies, velour pantsuits throughout.
The result’s each excessive tech and excessive camp, a glittery supernova of stupefying know-how, Nineteen Seventies nostalgia and pop music genius.
For many within the viewers, it was nearly like being taken again in time to observe ABBA carry out classics together with “Mamma Mia,” “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” “SOS” and “Dancing Queen.” The peppy 90-minute set additionally contains tracks from “Voyage,” the reunion album the band launched final 12 months.
It’s a fusion of tribute act and 3D live performance film that transcends that description. At instances it was doable to overlook this wasn’t a reside efficiency, although when the backing singers stepped ahead to belt out “Does Your Mother Know,” a surge of live-music power shot via the world.
The 4 band members — two married {couples} throughout ABBA’s heyday, although now lengthy divorced — obtained a rapturous ovation once they took a bow on the finish of Thursday’s present, 50 years after they shaped ABBA, and 40 years after they stopped performing reside.
Watching one’s youthful self carry out have to be a wierd sensation, however the band members, now of their 70s, stated they had been delighted by the present.
“I never knew I had such amazing moves,” Ulvaeus stated.
Lyngstad agreed: “I thought I was quite good, but I’m even better.”
Ulvaeus stated the viewers’s response was essentially the most gratifying a part of the expertise.
“There’s an emotional connection between the avatars and the audience,” he stated. “That’s the fantastic thing.”
Producers invoice the present as “revolutionary.” Time will inform. Like the primary audiences to observe a speaking movement image a century in the past, attendees could depart questioning whether or not they’re watching a gimmick, or the long run.
The Times of London reviewer Will Hodgkinson judged the present “essentially an ABBA singalong with added sound and light show,” although he known as the impact “captivating.” Writing in The Guardian, Alexis Petridis known as the live performance “jaw-dropping” and stated “it’s so successful that it’s hard not to imagine other artists following suit.”
Gimmick or genius, “ABBA Voyage” is reserving in London till May 2023, with a world tour deliberate after that.
The followers who attended Thursday’s present are simply delighted ABBA is again.
“I’m so excited,” stated Kristina Hagman, a Swede who has been a fan because the Nineteen Seventies.
“I was bullied so much because you were not allowed to like ABBA at that time, because it was so commercial,” she said. “But now we are taking revenge.”
