That’s right, Dancing Queens – in the event that you missed (or very likely were not alive) for the famous ABBA farewell tour in 1979, you are getting a second chance to see the Swedish hits live and in person!
Mania, The ABBA Tribute comes highly recommended from a featured run on London’s West End and will be bringing the house down at the Stafford Centre on February 28.
Alison Ward, who played Agnetha in Mania, has had a first hand seat to witness the enduring ABBA craze. “It’s still going strong,” she says cheerily. “I’ve been blessed to be with the show for about, I joined in 2010. I’m originally from the UK, but I brought the show over to the U.S. team. Even 13 years on, I love it. It’s a full high-energy bright show with all the ABBA hits. Fabulous show. Everyone who comes, even if they are not fans of ABBA but are fans of live music – we have a full live band. Mostly we have ABBA fans, we have them up on their feet, singing along, joining in. Swaying their hands on the ballads, and then obviously every night we end with ‘Dancing Queen’ and its just a great, great screaming session every time.”
Alongside Ward will be James Allen playing Bjorn, Amy Edwards as Frida and Jeff Pike as Benny. “These are some of my best friends,” Ward says. ”We’re a family. Even just with James Allen and I, good old Facebook, just popped up a memory of us performing 14 years ago! We’re a little musical family.”
Speaking of, Ward surmises her own family is the reason she has the career she has today. “I’m gonna be 1,000 percent honest,” she laughs. “I come from a musical family: mom sang, sister sang, my uncle. I always wanted to sing... I have never had a singing lesson! I went to university for a mathematics degree, but I earn my living ever since with my singing.”
“I moved to Vegas with a show, and I’ve been booked for the last few years as a headliner on all of the cruise ships with my own Allison Ward show. I’ve been busy and very lucky in these last few years, to still be busy as a singer. Very blessed indeed.”
The Stafford Centre seats over 1,000 at capacity, and that size of room is jfine with the gang, according to Ward. “We have done it all. This time last year, we actually were in New Orleans and we played the House of Blues, which is a much smaller venue. But, it was Mardi Grais, so it was absolutely crazy. So it all depends: we do theaters, arenas, smaller venues. It’s ABBA. ABBA works wherever you go!”
For Ward, the ABBA gig is not just one of singing, but a challenge of characterization too. “We actually do it in a Swedish accent. The costumes are more of less what they wore at Waterloo, the famous concert. We have very similar costumes. [For dancing,] ABBA was very minimal. Very simple steps and we keep it very much choreographed like them. But just as we have kept the vocals as they did and keep it typical to ABBA. We just want it to be as realistic as possible so that people can feel like that we are re-enacting an actual live ABBA concert. Yeah, the real deal. ”
While it was hard to carry the show off during COVID, Ward says it was less time away than people might think. “I will tell you for a fact, we did as much as we could. We were actually magically very gracious to be one of the first shows to open back up on London’s West End. It just worked out date wise and so we were the first musical back! That was awesome, yeah and we just got straight to it over here. We did Florida in February of 2021 where things were a little bit different in Florida! We’re back at full, we’re seeing numbers even better than pre-COVID. So things are looking good.”
