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Bringing Kristina to the States
By Harry Haun
22 Sep 2009
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Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | The Americanization of Kristina, the smash Swedish musical by ABBA's Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, officially debuts Sept. 23 and 24 in concert form — at Carnegie Hall, if you please — with portents of a substantial Broadway gig to follow.
The question of what would happen to the show after those initial two days hung heavily in the air at the Kristina press conference, but the company line was coyly non-committable, and no one broke ranks to venture any kind of fearless prediction.
Louise Pitre, one of the principals, came closest to spilling the beans: "I have no idea what their plans are," she admitted, "but I'm assuming they're not doing this for nothing. Whatever, I think people who come to this concert will be blown away."
Indeed, when Kristina premiered Oct. 7, 1995, at the Malmo Opera and Music Theatre in Malmo, Sweden, one critic likened Andersson's musicality to that of Schubert. And, when a 90-minute concert version of that nearly four-hour score was presented — in Swedish, by the original cast — in Minneapolis a year later, Time magazine called it "one of the most ambitious swatches of musical theatre (39 songs!) since Gershwin's 1935 Porgy and Bess.'" Seconding that, the chief critic for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune likewise broke out the bells and drums, trumpeting that "I have seen the future of musical theater, and its name is Kristina!"
Now, almost 13 years later, the future seems to have at last arrived. This week's twin concerts mark the first time the show has been presented in English — Herbert Kretzmer, of Les Miserables fame, assisted lyricist Ulvaeus in the translation — and the results are being recorded for a release via Universal Music's Decca Records.
"Kristina never existed in English — till now," Andersson noted. "We just wanted to do this here-and-now thing. I think it's great to be able to present Kristina the way it should be presented. Where we go from here, we don't know. It's just something we really wanted to do. It's an event in itself. We've felt that from the beginning."
To hear the composer tell it, the Carnegie lift-off of Kristina may be the last example of the late Shubert Theatre chairman Gerald Schoenfeld making a show happen. "We were sitting talking with Gerry over breakfast a year-and-a- half ago, and we said, 'Do you know how nice it would be to do a concert of Kristina here — not the show, just a concert?" he recalled. "Gerry said, 'Well, where do you want to be?' And we said, 'We think the Carnegie Hall?' 'Do you want me to call?' he said, and he lifted the phone. It took two minutes. Suddenly we were up there, with him, talking to the people at Carnegie Hall, saying 'We want to do this show here.' They said, 'Fine. Just decide on a date.'"
Not that The Shubert's late kingpin, a shrewd showman, really required any arm-twisting: Kristina raked in a host of Swedish Tonys and racked up close to a four-year run on its home turf, becoming Sweden's second longest-running musical.
The only other original stage musical Andersson and Ulvaeus have attempted was Chess, which bowed in Sweden in 1984, opened in London in 1986 and reached Broadway in 1988. It closed here after 68 performances but enjoys a cult-musical status. The show that's stitched together from their greatest hits — Mamma Mia! — is still heartily holding on to the Winter Garden after more than 3,280 performances.
Kristina is sufficiently saga-sized, coming from a series of four novels by Swedish author Vilheim Moberg ("The Emigrants," "Unto a Good Land," "The Settlers" and "The Last Letter Home") that depicted the pioneering perils and ordeals of an extended family migrating from Sweden to Minnesota in the mid-19th century.
Swedish director Jan Troell turned the four books into two film epics, both starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann and both Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year ("The Emigrants" in 1971 and "The New Land" in 1972).
"After Chess," said Ulvaeus, "we read volume after volume, looking for a musical, and this is what we settled on. Lyrically, I was intrigued by Moberg's language."
But the sweep of the emigrants' story is what fired Andersson's musical imagination. "It begins with their predicament in Sweden, what drove the people to leave their country and find a new home half way around the world," said the composer.
"Kristina is the most interesting person in the books. That's why it's called Kristina, not The Emigrants. It's about her and her family, not the people around them. That would take six hours. Now, it's only three. At Carnegie Hall, with just the music and no dialogue, it's two-and-a-half hours. That's a lot of music to take in at the first go." Continued...
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