Thank you for the music

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...

ABBA Voyage : ABBA Arena

I'd heard this was good and it was a potential Xmas present for the lovely Mrs Reed - but then the Clydesdales decided they were going to venture over from NI to see it, so we all headed in to a strange part of town on a pleasant but chilly enough (but not nearly as chilly as the week before) Saturday afternoon.

And the "foyer" area of the arena made me very pleased that the temperature wasn't at the levels seen last week because they've made the somewhat strange choice of not having any walls - it's quite a nice looking structure and I'm sure it's lovely in the summer, but coats were very much required whilst we tucked in to some acceptable whilst obviously overpriced (but not excessively so) food and drink.  This also gave us an opportunity for some people-watching - there were QUITE the array of outfits on display with white boots and sparkly berets being the most frequently chosen options.

At which point it occurred to me I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the next couple of hours - I thought ABBA and holograms were involved, but apart from that I hadn't got a clue.  Some Googling told me the arena (which has been custom built) takes 3000 people, but I was intrigued as to what I was going to get as we headed in through some surprisingly futuristic tunnels.

But it's a nice venue - dance floor at the front, comfy seats for us old people and all sorts of things hanging from the ceiling that were obviously going to come into play throughout the gig.  And then the lights went down - and the band came up!  And they started off with...

..."The Visitors".  OK, I wasn't expecting them to start with one I must have heard, but totally don't remember - I'm sure the next one is going to get the crowd going though.  Ah yes, it's "Hole In Your Soul" - EVERYONE remembers that one, don't they?  Unsurprisingly, things do get more mainstream and the rest of it is mostly stuff off ABBA Gold, although it was nice to hear "Eagle" which one of their lesser known tracks that I really like and "When All Is Said And Done" is also pretty good.

And, unsurprisingly, the sound is pretty faithful to the original ABBA sound - despite the fact that a live band is involved, which I really wasn't expecting.  Some post-gig research tells me that the original voice, guitar and keyboard parts are provided by ABBA with the live band providing other layers of sounds - they do somewhat build up their part at times, but mostly they just stand off to the side and go a good job (and Wikipedia tells me that Little Boots is on keyboard).

The visuals are very well paired with the sound, but given that the main sound is pre-recorded that's probably not such a surprise.  The visuals are a strange mix - we have ABBA "on stage", "close ups" on the members of ABBA (the "ABBAtars") and some weird animated video for some tracks.  The "on stage" sections work quite well, but they're not all that visible from our seat (which isn't that far back), the "close ups" are impressive, but do look more like (very realistic) video game characters than people and the animated video is interesting, but quite what it means it particularly unclear.  At times, the various members of ABBA also take turns on the mike to banter with the crowd - opinions were mixed amongst us as to whether it made them seem more human or just made them seem creepier.

At this point, I need to correct my earlier misapprehension - there's no holograms involved in the show.  It's basically a MASSIVE telly with the internet claiming it's both 65 meters tall and has 65 million pixels, but that doesn't feel that many given that a 4k screen's got 8 million - whatever the numbers, it's BIG!  The overall visual design has been well done to give a good sense of depth though, often supplemented with clever use of the arena lighting - and there are also some awesome lasers!

Overall, I enjoyed the show but I think it's fair to say that I didn't enjoy it as much as most of the audience - there were some VERY enthusiastic people in there.  Including the woman next to me, who didn't have 100% control over her body and I was a bit concerned I was going to get smacked in the head whenever she was dancing or clapping (but I generously don't blame ABBA for that).  

The other thing that affected my enjoyment was the countless questions that kept popping into my head all the way throughout the show - my brain spent far more time thinking about them than I was expecting.  Some of these are

Why did they pick those first two songs to start with?
Where were "Super Trouper" and "Mamma Mia"?
Why did they gender-swap "Does Your Mother Know"?
Was "The Winner Takes It All" really the best track to end it all on?
Why do the male ABBAtars look so much better than the female ones?
What was with all that weird animated film stuff?
Did we really need the band?
With my techy head on, how does it all work?
What band is going to go down this route next?

and I've STILL got no idea to most of the answers! 

However, as Derek would say, "don't get me wrong" it was a great show with some amazing technology which I'm pleased I went to see, but I'm still left feeling "did I actually enjoy it?".  I'm also not convinced it was worth what we paid for it because the tickets are seriously not cheap (it's bringing in a LOAD of cash every week!) - I think "impressive as opposed to enjoyable" is my overriding feeling.  There's no denying the quality of the music though and if you're a massive ABBA fan there's a load to love here.

Danny Baker - An enjoyable load of waffle
An Enemy Of The People - Slightly disappointing