The music in this new multimedia exhibition is sublimely good, but it attempts to give the band historical heft they simply didn’t have
ABBA: Super Troupers The Exhibition, O2, London, ★★★
ABBA fans can already have an immersive dining/dancing/singing experience at the O2 in Mamma Mia! The Party, and now, almost as a companion piece, is ABBA: Super Troupers The Exhibition, a show that sets out to tell “the story of the band, their music and the era they defined”.
I’m not sure – even as a dedicated fan – that ABBA defined an era, but on the other two points this multimedia exhibition makes a decent go of describing how Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad became an overnight international sensation when they won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974.
The audio guide for this show is a must, as the written material on walls and stands is in tiny print and would be impossible to read for most people unless they are up close. But they contain music, background information and interviews with the band and their associates.
The interviews throw up some interesting snippets, including how the band was formed – after Benny and Björn’s chance meeting at a festival led to them discovering a mutual love of The Beatles – and that the reversed second “B” in the ABBA logo came about when Benny, the joker of the group, was horsing around at a press shoot.
Many items are simply memorabilia rather than real artefacts – Björn’s school report, for instance – and, with a news timeline in each room that sets their careers in context, the exhibition tries to give some historical heft to the group they didn’t have, despite their many achievements.
The music is, of course, sublimely good, and the exhibition shows ABBA’s progression from glam to pop (or Happy-Pop as one German television station called it) to disco. A must for ABBA completists, but perhaps not for the casual music fan.
