Keira Knightley Kate Moss Kylie Minogue Benny Andersson Mark Sutherland Agnetha Faltskog Björn Ulvaeus Anni Frid Lyngstad Sweden show song Digital Keira Knightley Kate Moss Kylie Minogue Benny Andersson Mark Sutherland Agnetha Faltskog Björn Ulvaeus Anni Frid Lyngstad Sweden

ABBA’s ‘Voyage’ CGI Extravaganza Is Everything It’s Cracked Up to Be, and More: ‘Concert’ Review

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variety.com

Mark Sutherland “To be or not to be, that is no longer the question,” declared ABBA co-founder and musical mastermind Benny Andersson at the start of “ABBA Voyage,” the Swedish quartet’s first “concert” in over 40 years.

And if that sounds like a curiously existential way to begin a pop concert, well, this is no ordinary live show.For a start, despite Andersson’s insistence that “This is really me, I just look very good for my age,” it’s actually his de-aged, computer-generated avatar — or “ABBA-tar,” if you must — that is speaking his pre-recorded words.

Alongside him are the similarly CGI-rendered forms of his bandmates, all looking as they did — or, in truth, actually somewhat better than — they did in their ‘70s heyday.

Meet, then, the prefab four, playing a show that is billed, 100% accurately, as “a concert like no other” — which doesn’t mean it isn’t every bit as big a deal as it would have been had ABBA reformed for a more traditional concert.Staged in the purpose-built ABBA Arena near East London’s Olympic Park, the world premiere performance nonetheless attracted royalty of both the showbiz world (Kylie Minogue, Keira Knightley, Kate Moss) and actual sovereign variety: the King and (dancing) Queen of Sweden walked the red carpet in support of one of their nation’s leading exports.However, it was the presence of all four real-life members of ABBA — Andersson, co-founder Björn Ulvaeus, and lead singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad and the usually reclusive Agnetha Fältskog — that caused the real stir, proof of the demand fueling this technologically ground-breaking (and presumably wildly expensive) new concept in entertainment.The stakes, therefore, are high.

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