LONDON – I kept going to my friend, to tell him how young and fresh the two women who put the Ace in Abba on the giant screens in front of us looked like. Actually, Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad weren’t in the room with us, but that’s the kind of stupor that Abba Voyage dazzles you with.
Although the Swedish pop band has not played in London since 1979, the band’s holographic “Abbatars”, modeled on their likeness of that year, are currently filling a stage tailored for a 90’s concert. minutes of his great achievements. A combination of performance captured on the move, animated sequences and a band of 10 people live make up the show, which makes for a surprising case of the continued relevance of the music.
Projected on a screen that wraps around one side of the auditorium resembling a spaceship, the Abbatars mostly play as if it were a real concert. They “get in” under the stage, joke with the audience, ask for patience as they change costumes and come back for an encore.
It would be cheesy if it weren’t so fun and triumphant, and the people on Friday night were definitely on the side of the trip. Mostly a mix of couples in their mid-60s and younger gay men, leaning against the nightclub, attendees sang all the numbers with the intensity of a therapeutic ritual. Abba Voyage is a symbol worship exercise that separates from a normal night of Abba at the club using state-of-the-art production values.
“To be or not to be, that’s out of the question,” band member Benny Andersson says in a pre-recorded solo address, and questions about live performance, truth, eternity and fleetingness pile up. in the vertigo of being (almost) in the same room as one of the biggest acts in the history of pop music.
It’s hard to figure out why such a strange 21st century effort is a hit with audiences, but Abba’s music has its own strange alchemy. Take “Mamma Mia” (performed here in pink velvet jumpsuits with rhinestones): why is the hook an Italian slogan? Or “Fernando” (sung against a dramatic lunar eclipse): What could these four Swedes say about the Mexican revolution? And yet, something about the seriousness of these songs, reflected in the audience’s full chest belt, has made them inescapable pop standards.
These two songs are performed in a simple way, the life-size Abbatars and central, with surrounding screens projecting close-ups for those sitting at the level of the orchestra, behind a large dance floor. Most numbers are done this way, recreating a concert experience; the audience was delighted to dance and applaud every step of the way. The choreography, based on the actual movements of the band member, but captured from younger body doubles, reached its peak during “Gimme! Give me! Gimme !, ”with the digital Lyngstad making high kicks and twists that I’m not sure the one was really capable of doing in its heyday.
A couple of songs, however, were more playable as immersive music videos, with the full size of the screens used to tell more comprehensive visual stories. The band sang and performed with fame during their breakup, and “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, a 1977 anthem that reflects the dissolution of the group’s romantic and professional relationships, is performed here as a study by Ingmar. Bergman in lost connections. The fractured faces of its limbs sing through a room of mirrors before finally embracing each other in reconciliation.
Less successful than those episodes were two fully animated numbers, set in “Eagle” and “Voulez Vous”, after a young traveler’s journey through forests and pyramids, culminating in his discovery of giant sculptures of heads of the band member.
These songs recreate the interstitial fragments of a “real” concert, as do the speeches of each Abbatar about their success and their art. The best of these interludes saw the band present footage of their winning performance of the Waterloo Eurovision Song Contest, the song that catapulted them to fame in 1974.
Abba’s music is deceptively complex. What looks like a simple little song is revealed as an intricate network of harmonies, melodies, real and digital instruments and angelic English voices, a little outside the Scandinavian comfort zone of the band.
It is a mixture of magic and technical skill that, decades later, after films, musicals and compilations of great hits, is still at the peak of pop maximalism. Listening to the closing piano riffs of “Chiquitita” on a crowded stage is an exhilarating experience, and despite its overwhelming premise, Abba Voyage miraculously flies.