This time last year nobody knew what this skeleton of struts was for.
Today it's a world class tourist attraction, ABBA Voyage, in which thousands gather to watch a concert the 1970s popstars never gave.
And yesterday, as a joyful consequence of old school blogging, I got to step inside the hexagonal theatre on the former Olympic coach park and sing along to all the hits.
As a very local resident I've seen the matinee crowds massing outside the DLR before, but this time I was here to join them. Some had come in frilly sequinned costumes, some had picked out a special vibrant blouse, but most were simply dressed for summer. I imagine the queue for the cloakroom in the winter is going to be brutal. To enter the building all you have to do is pick your queue - A for Seated or B for Dance Floor, as should be written on your ticket (or else just listen to the poor member of staff who has to keep endlessly repeating it).
The security check is no problem so long as you haven't brought a golfing umbrella, glass bottle or bladed weapon. I got to sequentially remove the contents of my pockets (yes phone, yes wallet, yes keys, yes pack of mints) because the wand waver assumed I knew how the process worked, and because I don't keep all my accoutrements in a handbag. The extra step where they dropped my wristband on the floor, then picked it up and wrapped it round my wrist, was an additionally memorable touch.
Officially you can arrive up to two hours before the show starts, but that just hems you into a triangular concourse where pre-Voyage opportunities (and seating) are limited. You can buy food, but don't expect IKEA standard. You can buy drinks at above-pub prices, which in London isn't cheap. Hurrah, they actually had Beck's so I availed myself of a plastic glass of that. You can buy merch, which it's better to get before the performance to avoid the queues afterwards. And you can go to the toilet, which again you should do in advance because the show lasts 90 minutes without a interval. If nothing else they've made the roof much prettier than it needs to be.
When the time comes you head on into the arena. From here on it's no photography, which is excellent because it means nobody'll be waving their phone in the air for an hour and a half and blocking your view. The passageway round the outside of the building is rainbow-lit and surprisingly long, the reason for which becomes evident when you finally enter the auditorium and wow won't you look at the size of that. I've watched this building going up from 'Strut One' to 'Lifting The Roof Into Place', and even I was amazed how spacious it is inside. Dance floor up front, banks of seating behind and massive special effects void above your head. If you've bought a standing ticket be sure to arrive early if you want to be anywhere near the front of the stage (but I was happy to squeeze further back to soak in the full width of the screen).
It's a Scandinavian concert so it starts on time. It takes a few minutes for the band to 'appear' but suddenly there they are and singing away as if it were still 1979. It's uncanny because you know they're not real but when they move they could absolutely be standing there and when they sing it's like they totally are. I spent quite a bit of the opening track thinking 'how are they doing that?' and 'sure it's trickery with light but how can they look solid no matter which way you look?', but by track three I was singing along as if holographic septuagenarians were the most natural performers in the world.
The song choice is mostly bangers but with the odd curveball thrown in, including a couple of hits from the very latest album. ABBA's vast back catalogue means not everything makes the cut, including songs you'll walk out convinced they played except they didn't. And you're not just getting a sanitised recorded performance, a substantial live band is present on stage and occasionally pops up to make more of a fuss of itself. Yes, that is the actual Little Boots on keyboards, contributing to a wall of sound that occasionally overplays itself and blurs into distorty fuzz.
It's a lot more fun being down on the dance floor than up on the seats. There isn't room to gyrate properly but much bobbing and swaying is possible, not to mention mild flinging when some of the more popular numbers emerge. I'd love to know whether it was just our performance that decided to wave collective arms in the air from early on or whether every audience spontaneously does that. I enjoyed being five foot ten because most of the audience were shorter than me so I got a decent view throughout, whereas at most concerts the scattering of five elevens and six footers gets in my way. Sightlines are better from the grandstand but only so long as the row in front of you doesn't stand up, indeed during Dancing Queen you wouldn't have seen a thing if you'd stayed sullenly sitting down.
And it's not just 90 minutes of distant holographics, it's a full-on multi-media show. That means additional screens flipping down with video close-ups of the four singers, impressively 100% synchronised with whatever the figures are doing on stage. A bevy of special effects hangs down from the roof at appropriate moments, sometimes disc shaped and sometimes resembling chains of beads, not to mention a multitude of lasers firing in dazzling unison. This relentless variety keeps the show fresh - ooh this song's on video, ooh this song appears to be accompanying a fantastical cartoon adventure - but also means the four 'performers' are probably only on stage for about half the duration.
I'd say the audience was mostly people who'd been alive in 1974 along with people who wished they had been. Nobody was obviously attending a hen party but that vibe was ever present, including one group of five bubbly laydeez near me who seemed to spend more time bonding than watching the show. They also sent someone out partway to buy more drinks, and surreptitiously filmed themselves (alas without getting caught), and what I'm saying is be careful who you stand near. That said they were probably more fun than some of the husbands in front who weren't getting into the ABBA groove at all, but I wished they'd shut up gassing during the talky bits or even gone to a proper Mamma Mia experience instead.
The band undertake several costume changes during the show, occasionally knowingly, switching from swishy silk to Tron-style catsuits to full-on spangly bacofoil. It is jawdropping to see the effort that's gone into making them look like younger versions of themselves, particularly in close-ups on screen, right down to the individual hairs on the boys' chests and a virtual freckle on Agnetha's skin that's always in the same place. During the performance I even reassessed which one of them I most fancied, so alluring were their youthful avatars, although having later seen the quartet as they are today I suspect I made the correct decision in the 1970s.
The show rises to a choreographed crescendo with a sequence of all the right crowdpleasing songs, then knocks you sideways with one last emotional punch before the lights go up. This brings the realisation that the queues for the toilets are about to be terrible, especially if you're female, and that the refreshment options out front have now closed so it's time to flood away. The container hotel nextdoor, the Snoozebox, has capitalised on this by luring departing punters with portaloos and a bar called Dancing Queens, so you might well end up there. But most skedaddle without hanging around to see what else Pudding Mill Lane has to offer, which quite frankly isn't much, to do their post-ABBA socialising elsewhere.
Voyage is a cracking state-of-the-art experience which redefines what's possible in the staging of popular music. It means the band can live on long after their performance days are over, and without ever needing to turn up in an arena again. It's an easy way of raking in cash for the foreseeable future, because these tickets aren't cheap even if you try booking a midweek performance in six months' time. But it's also a wonderful way to say thankyou to the fans, of whom there are millions, who get to attend a pitch perfect gig they could never have seen 40 years ago. It will live long in the memory.
