ABBA Voyage is a concert residency in London located at a purpose built facility – the ABBA Arena – in East London. A lot has been written speculating about the show and how it works. Is it holograms or is it something else?
I was lucky enough to be invited to the VIP premiere on 26 May and subsequently attended again the following two days. Since I’ve seen it three times, I’m here to tell you what it’s really like. There are some spoilers, such as song titles for example and some of the images, so consider yourself warned.
ABBA Voyage Is No Hologram Show!
First of all, there are no holograms. What you have instead are avatars, digital copies of the real ABBA members. Industrial Light and Magic (yes, that one!) worked with the real ABBA members for five weeks doing motion capture for all the songs. All aged in their 70s, they were given basic choreography to do and all of this was recorded. The special effects wizards then created the avatars to resemble ABBA in the late 1970s.
How Realistic Is It Really?!
For starters, it is a technical triumph, with the avatars looking unbelievably realistic and brilliantly detailed. The visuals happening throughout the show as backdrops to the action are superb! It is feast for the eyes almost always, so you really have to pay attention as there’s a lot going on, which is awesome. I was afraid they would look like computer game characters, but it is far from that.
What Else? How About The Sound?
Sound wise the concert is faultless. Every song seems to feature the studio vocals, however as they have a live band and live backing vocalists, that gives it a live feeling which really works. If you’ve ever heard ABBA’s music live (such as at a Mamma Mia! performance) you know how good the music sounds in person and this band does it justice. It sounds brilliant throughout in every way.
While you have the four avatars “on stage”, the visuals also feature close-ups and sweeping around shots, views from above and so on placed on what would be the “big screens” at a normal concert. That’s where you can really see the detail of the avatars, the costumes, and the faces, which I really liked.
All four members speak to the audience individually, with Björn’s being the least successful, Frida’s the most heartfelt, Benny’s the most amusing and Agnetha’s was plain nice. The introduction they do to Waterloo (which is the Eurovision performance intercut with other 1970s performances of the song), talking to each other and the audience, is pretty fun.
Everyone Agrees It’s Great!
Reviews have been rather excellent, even newspapers from far away such as The New York Times giving it a positive review. You can also look to Twitter and I think this particular tweet sums things up rather nicely.
If you were thinking of going to see ABBA: Voyage – DO IT. I expected to see some fun, campy disco holograms. I ACTUALLY saw what appeared to be REAL, wept profoundly, and left feeling I'd seen the future. ABBA have built a plywood Pop Church in East London, & it's deeply moving
— Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) May 30, 2022
There’s also an excellent write up at Super Deluxe Edition, which is worth a read as well. I like how that one sort of goes into the history of how the group gradually became more popular from the 1990s onwards.
Overall Thoughts
I guess the real question is, would I see it again? Absolutely! All the praise being heaped on it is very well deserved. Quite frankly, I loved it and if you get a chance to see it, go, go and go. Hell, even if you need to plan a trip to see it, plan it, make it happen.
From a creative standpoint, the decisions made really work. Two of the songs feature an animation playing on the screens throughout, which is really cool. The backdrops and the way everything is done is top level work through and through and really has to be seen to be believed.
As an experience on its own from a purely technical standpoint, it’s worth seeing. The fact it’s a concert and an ABBA concert at that, well, need I say more? It’s such a wonderful thing all round – everyone who worked on it should be very proud! Is this the future of live performance? Who knows, but honestly, you must experience this in person. No picture or video does it justice.
Will you be going to the ABBA Voyage concerts in London? If you’ve already been, what did you think of them? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
Like planes? See my “Does anyone remember” series.
Flight reviews your thing? Mine are all indexed here.
Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Featured image via Barts District Online News.
The Visitors blue and red image by Johan Persson via The New York Times.
Dolce & Gabbana image via Vogue by D&G via ABBA Voyage.
That looks incredible. Hope some form of the show makes it to the States. Please tell me they played “Rock Me” and “Does Your Mother Know?”!
It’s pretty mind blowing, that’s for sure! Yeah, they play Does Your Mother Know, but it’s the band’s song. So Bjõrn does the first bit, then it’s all the band from there on. Very good though! No Rock Me, sadly. The arena is designed to be taken apart, transported and re-used so it’ll be interesting to see where it goes next – and when!
Whilst there’s some applause due for the effort in putting the show together, the technology has a lot of limitations and it becomes increasingly obvious as the show progresses. The 3D illusion doesn’t hold up and right from the off, you can see they are simply two dimensional forms on a very static plane. The avatars remain trapped at the very back of the stage and there is no way to bring the performance of the avatars front and centre. They occasionally drop mesh screens down to change things up, but these wind up making everyhting else look foggy, and the flashy lighting is sometimes overdone and intrusive, particularly when it beams right at your eyes and blinds you. The lighting contrast of the avatars is also too harsh, so the facial features are lost to shadow and highlight – I suspect this is deliberate and why so many of the animations feature sparkling or neon costumes to draw your attention away from the faces. The larger projections betrayed other technical weaknesses and there was a fair amount of visual distortion, with faces stretching and details smearing as they played out on the big screen In some songs the lip sych was off by a fraction (most notably during Winner Takes It All). Perhaps all of this will be improved upon as technology evolves, but right now it doesn’t deliver that jawdropping spectacle of realism that many people gush about.
There are four songs without an animated performance – Does You Mother Know (handled by the live band and backing vocalists). I think the backing vocalists got too carried away with themselves on that one. There was some really unpleasant ululation and shrieking going on when I went to see it and I consequently loathed their rendition of thje song. Eagle and Voulez-Vous both feature incongrous and utterly boring animations neither of which evoke the band nor the mood of the songs in any way Worse, is that they offer no narrative payoff in the context of the rest of the show.. I genuinely hated these installments and would have prefered more avatar performances in their stead. Waterloo was simply a collection of Eurovision related TV appearances edited together – ironically this sequence perfectly underscored how flat and lifeless much of the facial animation of the avatars really is – particularaly around the eyes and brows.
I came away disappointed by the duration, the absense of so many classic singles and popular album tracks, and the overwhelming sense I’d just attended an expensive karaoke session. I don’t feel I got value for money.
The venue is not in a great or convenient location, much of the area is poor and rundown there were a few “shanty” dwellings around the nearby bridges amongst the shrubbery. There is no parking, and there seems to be some intention that people should use the DLR, which isn’t particularly well integrated with local bus routes or the more ubiquitous London Underground.
Hi David, thank you for that very fine forensic analysis you have provided there. I am sure people who read it will appreciate your thoughts and what they provide – I enjoyed the read myself. I am glad you took the time to provide that write up, much appreciated!