ABBA cadabra

10:29am Saturday 5th July 2008

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As the film version of Mamma Mia opens next week, Oscar-winner Meryl Streep talks to Steve Pratt about starring in the mother of all musicals.

WHEN Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frid walked away from the microphone in the early 1980s, it looked like the end of the ABBA story. They never officially split up, just took time off to pursue individual projects and never came back together as a group.

No one could have predicted that 25 years later, two of them would be still around talking about their songs, as popular today as they've ever been. "The revival took me completely by surprise. I thought that it was all over in the Eighties," admits Bjorn Ulvaeus.

Tribute band Bjorn Again helped bring their music back to the fore, while the re-release of their hits on ABBA Gold reinforced the comeback, on record if not in person.

Now, with a cry of ABBA cadabra, they embark on the next stage - to conquer the big screen with the ABBA brand.

Their catalogue of hits was turned into a stage musical, Mamma Mia, and that's now become a movie with the likes of - and who'd have guessed? - Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, former James Bond Pierce Brosnan and Pride and Prejudice's Mr Darcy, Colin Firth.

The sight of Streep, more usually associated with dramas such as Sophie's Choice and Out Of Africa, in dungarees as mother Donna singing ABBA is vaguely embarrassing at first. Like catching your dad gyrating on the dancefloor.

But the ABBA magic casts its spell, the familiar tunes are irresistible and, by the spandex-and-platform- heels singalong finale, you'll be dancing in the cinema aisles.

What's surprising is that the creators of the stage musical - producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson and director Phyllida Lloyd - have been allowed to make the movie, despite being novices in that area.

Craymer, who first collaborated with Benny Andersson and Bjorn on the London premiere of their musical, Chess, feels it was just a matter of time before Mamma Mia came to the big screen.

"We opened the show in 1999 and there were 19 productions. I don't think there was anywhere else we could go in the world. We thought before we get too old, what can we do together?' and that was the film," she explains before this week's world premiere in London.

Like ABBA, Mamma Mia is "a global entertainment phenomenon". Never has their song Money Money Money seemed so apt. Nine of the productions are generating more than $8ma- week in ticket sales and more than 30 million people worldwide have seen the show that's grossed more than $2bn at the theatrical box office.

Andersson and Ulvaeus must be glad they overcame initial reluctance to having their songs turned into a musical about a mother and daughter on a Greek island where thoughts of marriage and motherhood fill their heads.

Director Lloyd applied the same criteria to filming Mamma Mia as she might to the plays and operas she usually stages. "I wasn't really thinking about a film except I knew that, unlike a lot of other stage musicals, we had the advantage that we already were a location, we already had Greece. A lot of stage shows have difficulty finding a life on screen," she explains.

Craymer, for her part, was determined they'd only make Mamma Mia as a movie if it was a cinematic experience. And Lloyd wasn't afraid to alter the show for film, which means ABBA favourites Knowing Me Knowing You and Name Of The Game are missing, as she felt they didn't fit in with the screen narrative.

"We wanted every song to earn its place on screen in telling the story," she adds.

The ABBA songwriters had no concerns about the film as they'd already ensured the stage show was a fictional story and not about ABBA. "The only thing we said was that anyone who wants to be in this film has to be able to sing. We saw everyone, so we knew we were safe, " says Andersson.

The first Hollywood star associated with the project was Tom Hanks, whose production company joined with Craymer's in producing the film. The real coup was getting Streep as the mother whose daughter, on the eve or her wedding, demands to know which of three of her mother's old boyfriends is her father.

It doesn't sound like Streep needed much persuasion, having seen Mamma Mia shortly after its New York opening, taking her tenyear- old daughter with friends for her birthday party. "It was right after September 11 and everyone was feeling really low," she recalls.

"And I thought what am I going to do with all these kids?' I saw an ad in the New York Times and it said New British Musical - Buoyant Fun'. So I took the kids and we were all dancing in the aisles and down the street."

She's clearly a big ABBA fan. "I've sung all of these songs about 7,000 times. From starting in my closet - which was the only place my family would allow me to practise - all the way to Pinewood, where we filmed. But I never got sick of singing these songs. Never ever.

"In my dance school, they used to use ABBA to rev everyone up for dance class because you just can't not be excited when it starts.

"The music is so much more precise than I thought when I first sang along to the radio. I thought I knew every word, but all the words I thought I knew were wrong. Working on it made me appreciate it so much more."

She hopes the youngsters she took to the musical will feel as good about the film as she does.

"I can't wait for them to see it. We've made this for our daughters. My son, I don't know, he'll be appalled - but actually I think he'll like it because he's a musician and he'll get a kick out of it," she says.

She impressed the ABBA men who were there all the time, during pre-recording and on set during shooting. "They were very generous in how they let us express their songs, as long as we were exact on the words and the timing,"

says Streep, who's always loved doing stage musicals.

"I didn't want to let them down, I didn't want to let down all the Donnas. There's something like 500 Donnas and we're in a club now. There are so many great songs and it was such a joy to sing them."

Ulvaeus remains very proud of their songs.

Just don't ask him to pick a favourite. "I don't have one, several, it's very difficult," he says.

"We tried to emulate what The Beatles had done, to develop from album to album and take another step each time. It means there are favourites from different periods."

Andersson agrees. "They are all different.

It's impossible to say. Winner Takes It All, maybe," he says.

Agnetha and Anni-Frid are conspicuous by their absence, following their decision to retreat from the public eye. "But I think they're equally flattered and happy. They've seen the show a couple of times and enjoyed it," says Andersson.

* Mamma Mia (PG) opens in cinemas on Friday.