12-step program and confetti rain at Ullevi

I Love Musicals Allstars 170617

Photo & © GP, Thomas Johansson

Göteborgs-Posten 170617

By: SOFIA ANDERSSON

Concert Reviews. The highlights are so many that they don’t fit in a text when Peter Jöback, Helen Sjöholm and Tommy Körberg put on a show in a crowded Ullevi.

I love musicals
Peter Jöback with guests
Ullevi, Friday
Best: There are many best-moments. I choose Du måste finnas.
Worst: The first three quarters are restrained.
Audience: 26 742 and sold out.

I Love Musicals is Peter Jöback’s declaration of love for the genre, which not seldom is looked down upon. This evening the world’s largest “AA meeting for musical lovers” is held. There is no shame here. We participate in a real-life escape lined with strong colors, glitter and confetti.

The genre has saved him. During a dysfunctional upbringing, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire acted as “babysitters” from the television screen. The knowledge gives the show an extra dimension. The glow behind the words is bright.

The atmosphere is at first restrained. We sit in neat lines with our hands crossed, like at the cinema, waiting to be entertained. It first sparkles in Hair. The  60’s hippie movement takes over the stage while my neighbours scream along in the lines of Aquarius, by a fantastic Helen Sjöholm, and Let the sunshine in. The space on stage is made the most of. Then the routined Tommy Körberg follows up with the crowd pleaser in Chess’s Anthem.

It becomes clear that the performance is best when we get to stay in a musical for a few songs. We find our way back to the story and the feeling in it. No matter how professional it is, it cannot be ignored that the dramaturgy is damaged when we only get to eat the raisins in the cake. The contrasts, where the ugly reinforces the beauty, disappears.

The 40-member orchestra Stockholm Sinfonietta and the soloists are world class. The evening is at the same time liberatingly unpretentious. The trio tells anecdotes and treat us to themselves. When Andrew Lloyd Webber was 19 years old, he had made a career, when Helen Sjöholm was 19, she drank her wallet away on the ferry to Turku.

The highlights are so many that they don’t fit in this text. I laugh heartily at Scarlett Strallen’s collapse in the over-the-top number from Candide. Favorite moments are also Peter Jöback’s explosion in powerful Gethsemane from Jesus Christ Superstar or when the crowd lifts Bortom sol och måne, with thousands of mobile lights in the air. Tam Mutu’s version of Music of the Night is also something extra. Groovy crescendos matches shimmering Broadway smiles.

But what hits the most is Helen Sjöholm’s focus in the stripped down version of Du måste finnas from Kristina från Duvemåla, in which she and Peter Jöback got their big breakthrough. In a red dress against black and white, she takes full control of the arena. She radiates everything that’s good.

The 12-step program ends with a confetti rain. We are lifted into the real reality with the lines “climb every mountain,” till you find your dream “.

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