What's Up, Benny and Björn? The Super Troupers Storm NYC

Swedish songwriting team Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus are proof that not only can lightning strike twice, it can keep on striking. The duo, co-creators of pop super group ABBA and the global musical phenomenon Mamma Mia!, are back in NYC to present the American premiere of their musical Kristina, which ran for a gajillion years in Sweden. The special two-night only concert will play Carnegie Hall on September 23-24. We jumped at the chance to chat with the super troupers and find out what’s up with them.

Tell me about Kristina.
BJÖRN: The music that we wrote in the middle of the '90s has now been translated to English for the first time. It’s an epic about some people who left Sweden in the 1850s to go to America, so it’s kind of an American saga.

What do you have to say to audiences expecting Kristina to be like Mamma Mia!?
BENNY: They will be in trouble. It has no resemblance to that at all—apart from the fact that it’s the same guys behind it. We thought it would be nice to present this as a contrast to that—and also just to say, “We can do this too!”

Why do it as a concert at Carnegie Hall rather than as a production on Broadway or elsewhere?
BJÖRN: This time we thought it would be great fun to present Kristina musically, the way she should sound: with a big symphony orchestra, a big choir and in a wonderful place like Carnegie. But who knows? Broadway might be ready for some serious stuff again, and then we’re ready.
BENNY: Another reason [is that] we will record it, so we will have Kristina in English for people who may be interested in hearing what’s going on and also can’t come to the hall.

Did you ever imagine Mamma Mia! would be such a monster hit all over the world?
BENNY: Absolutely! [Laughs]
BJÖRN: Well, I didn’t, no.
BENNY: Nobody did.
BJÖRN: I honestly thought it would be a small show in London—if even. I thought it would run for a year perhaps.
BENNY: [We are] very grateful to Catherine Johnson, who wrote the thing.

Why do you think it works so well?
BENNY: You can say the music is actually a Trojan horse for a very intricate story that is told. There have been so many attempts at doing this kind of musical after Mamma Mia!—some of them not so bad, most of them bad. It’s not like you take a heap of songs and put them together and hope for the best. It takes a clever writer.

You are being modest. These are some of the catchiest songs of all time.
BENNY: We don’t mind that, you’re right. But that’s not the thing with Mamma Mia!—it’s just the help.
BJÖRN: It could have been an ABBA cabaret, but it’s not.

It certainly has opened up new audiences for the ABBA songbook.
BJÖRN: The strange thing is people seem to know these songs wherever you go around the globe. How that happened is a mystery to me.
BENNY: After the movie and especially after the DVD, there are a lot of children all of a sudden learning these songs. They [don’t] treat it like ABBA stuff, they treat them like Mamma Mia! songs.

So you were the ABBA guys, then you became the Mamma Mia! guys… and now you’re the Kristina guys?
BENNY: Yes, now we’re the Kristina guys! We were the Chess guys for a while, too. We’ll see what happens. We’ll do this concert at Carnegie Hall, and we will have a ready-made concert. Chess has been doing really well as a concert.

Will we see a Chess revival on Broadway anytime soon?
BJÖRN: There’s always someone wanting to do it. It’s the matter of us and Tim [lyricist Tim Rice] agreeing about the story... He said mysteriously!
BENNY: There’s always someone who wants to do Chess, either here or in England.
BJÖRN: It’s still very much around, even though it was such a disaster here on Broadway.
BENNY: There are so many different treatments to the story. We have to make up our mind which version we like the best.

Your careers are so long and varied.
BJÖRN: The first national hit we had was more than 35 years ago, and we’re still here!

You’ve been very successful, you could have rested on your laurels. Did you ever consider retiring?
BJÖRN: It’s not fun to retire.
BENNY: We haven’t tried really, maybe it is.
BJÖRN: We haven’t tried, but I’m sure it’s extremely boring. When you’re writing, you [might end up] writing for an ever smaller audience, but you still go on. You die with your boots on.