Mamma Mia! 5th anniversary: Benny, Björn & beyond: Revising Chess, readying Kristina and taking Mamma Mia! home. By Robert Hofler

Mamma Mia! is going home to Sweden next year. It will mark only the second time that any ABBA song has been sung in the composers' native language.

We originally sang Waterloo in Swedish, says Björn Ulvaeus, thinking back to 1974 and the Eurovision Song Competition. Having won the first leg of that contest in Sweden, ABBA took an English version of Waterloo to Brighton, England, where the group took first place in the European contest. They never looked back, and never sang in Swedish again.

English is the language of pop and rock, says Ulvaeus, who wrote the ABBA songs with Benny Andersson. It is Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

While Mamma Mia! has turned into a huge tour show, it didn't get its legs from ABBA. The pop group (Ulvaeus and Andersson together with ABBA's Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad) never put in much time on the road.

Out of an eight-year career, ABBA never toured more than five or six months, says Ulvaeus, who vaguely recalls 25 U.S. gigs in 1979. Benny and I realized early on that this business ends and begins with the songs. It was more creative and challenging for us to write and record. True performers reinvent themselves every night onstage. I don't think we did.

As for Mamma Mia!, producer Judy Craymer had the idea to take the ABBA songs and make them into a TV special. It was never meant to be onstage, says Ulvaeus.

But things evolve. At one point, it was going to be a small stage musical. Very intimate. Then we got the offer to use the Prince Edward Theater, and the idea grew with the theater, he says.

In between ABBA and Mamma Mia!, Ulvaeus and Andersson wrote the musical Chess with Tim Rice and Richard Nelson. A revised Swedish version of the chess match tuner opened two years ago in Stockholm. The Shuberts, who produced the 1988 Broadway production, have remained supportive.

I never got that show out of my system, Gerald Schoenfeld has said. Talk of a Broadway revival continues to surface.

We're hoping to do something, so it can be translated back into English, says Ulvaeus. The action now takes place in five days, the pace is much quicker, there are two new songs, but you would recognize it.

The Benny and Björn oeuvre of stage musicals is not huge. I'm a bit lazy, admits Ulvaeus. Finding good stories is difficult.

Likely to be seen Stateside next is their new one, Kristina Från Duvemåla, based on the Vilhelm Moberg novels about Swedes immigrating to Minnesota. (Liv Ullmann starred in the 1971 film version, The Emigrants.) The show ran for three years in Sweden, and a concert of the songs has been presented in Minneapolis.

It was their history. You could feel the audience understood, even though they didn't know Swedish, Ulvaeus says.

Herbert Kretzmer is putting finishing touches on the lyrics. Very soon, we'll have a script that we can show to people in America, Ulvaeus says. I want more than anything to bring 'Kristina' here. Transcribed for ABBA World

Variety · 5-11April 2004 (Page A6)

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