Scandinavium is, in Stephen Humphries apt phrase, "so ABBA, because it is so 70's" looking in its external appearance. Inside, it is a typical multi purpose oval. The stage was placed at the right (east) side of this oval, just inside of the curve. So the stage pretty well spanned the width of the floor.
To close the area behind the stage (the unused portion of the building's oval) a black curtain was drawn on both sides from the seating areas to the edge of the stage. This wall of black was continued across the back of the stage, in part with drapes, but also with black structures. And on this back "wall", behind the main stage , and looming high above it, were giant B's, backs towards one another. Each B was in turn composed of a series of what abba fans know to be super troupers. I would guess the letters were 40' tall; they may have been larger. As we gathered and sat down and awaited the show, the spotlights within these B's were not lit. However, the spines of these B's were not adjacent, as with the familiar logo. Rather, they were separated by a modern, square television screen, as tall as the B's.
And on this screen, at the outset, was the new logo of this event, which I had first seen on the black and gold posters around town and within Scandinavium: two B's, backed toward one another and sharing a spine, looking something like this:
Seeing this caused an emotional reaction, exactly because it was so suggestive of ABBA. During the performance, this screen would show the live action on stage, but now it hearkened to ABBA.
Might we identify this as an oblique resurrection?
Could it really be happening that ABBA is in vogue?
How happy I was to see this.
During the early portions of the show, the stationary, giant B's would be lit to a soft opalescence. Certainly this was appropriate to ballads. But when things rocked, the B's would pulse and flash brighter, often on the final syllable of a verse line, and definitely on beat. Good enough.
But, as the first half of the show came near its end, perhaps when Karin and Helen were spinning their energetic Ring Ring, and the B's were pulsing, a sadness came over me. For, what are B's without A's.
Consider the dilemma faced by the set designers. There are politics involved here. Perhaps Polygram owns the trademark now, but the girls still live, and this was achingly not a tribute to them. This issue, this pain, welled its way upward within me, toward my eyes. Hard as the set designers were trying to make tribute to B's, hard as the performers were performing ABBA songs, the death of the marriages and of the group was mapped out for us all to unavoidably observe, there along the east reach of a building in Göteborg.
What would you have done, if you were designing the set?
Incidentally, just below the B's and the giant tv screen, was a black riser, with stairways leading up to it from both sides. Here ascended the 100 voice Goteburg Symfonisker Chorus. As it turns out, the producers of this show correctly judged that it would at times take more than a hundred voices and a full orchestra to duplicate the studio magic.
The mainstage was laid out with the orchestra skewed toward left and center. The violas, cellos and basses were crushed in from the right side, so that the farthest third could house the rock musiciansm. These included: Per Lindvall on drums and Rutgar Gunnarsson on bass. There was a second percussionist, and at least two guitars. Two keyboardists, neither of whom was Benny.
Thus, in the pop numbers, the strong voices of Helen and Karin (and the boys when they took the lead), were being reinforced both a rock band and a full orchestra. This was the strategy of Phil Spector. And it absolutely works.
As the second half of the show moved on through predominantly post ABBA pieces, I wondered if the show's producers felt bound by chronology. Excepting, of course, that they had closed out the first half ABBA selections with Waterloo; but that could be understood as merely an inversion: the breakthrough be transformed into the finale. I was digesting this thought when Orsa Spelman launched into Arrival. The crowd loved it, probably for its Svenskfolk incantations rather than its ABBA connection. The crowd seemed to have a lot of good will toward Orsa Spelman; loved the leather smocks and knickers. People were stamping to the beat with there feet on the wooden Parkett floor.
As the song died out, the low rumble which had been coming from the stamping feet did not die out. It was hard to discern, at first, but in fact there was a subtle change in the sonics.
Something was happening.
The big 's were blinking and glaring.
And beside them, to left and right of the mainstage, two banks of lights, which seemed to be shaped like arrows were pivoting and pointing upward.
No.
Something else.
"A's".
The A's rose until they fully flanked the B's, and they blazed, they all blazed. The low rumble which had been in fact a kind of fanfare for this symbology was now surreal, and blending into something else, as Helen and Karin, who had, I guess, intentionally been out of spotlight, now from alternate corners of the stage raced to the middle, and all the lights were flashing, and thousands of feet were stamping, couldn't help stamping, and there were cries of recognition and joy lasering across the open air, and applause which you could feel like an emotion, and the lights were flashing, and the giant letters were there on that black back wall, pulsing like some long and intense and over awaited orgasm, and the hypnotic chant of Take a Chance on Me began to reach inside of me and grab at my heart, and Helen and Karin were right there 15 yards away from me putting it out there, and there was no changing our minds, but we were going back, and my glasses had fogged, and my eyes were dripping, and my chest was heaving like a piston, and I was in himlen, but my heart was breaking in every way possible.
I believe Stephen Humphries, on the floor at row 19, was having his own similar reaction.