Former ABBA member has created a restaurant/theater where you sing while you eat!

Just like the original Mamma Mia!, the storyline is told through the medium of Abba songs, with as many of them as possible threaded onto this giant kebab of meaty pop delights.

Mamma Mia! The Party opened 18 months ago in Stockholm and has been playing to full houses ever since. There are six performances each week, all of them playing to a capacity audience of 450, with everybody crammed at taverna tables to snack on meze, drink wine and experience the emotional force that can still be wrung out of these pop classics.

The world simply cannot get enough of Abba music, and even Bjorn is at a loss to explain why: ‘I don’t know what it is, it is an enigma to me why these songs keep coming back.

‘When we wrote and recorded them, we thought they might last two years. We didn’t expect this after 35 years.’

The band split in 1982, and have sold over 375 million records.

Today, Bjorn is perhaps richer than many small countries. He lives on a private island in the Stockholm archipelago, loves his family (a father of four, he is married to Swedish rock journalist Lena Kallersjo) and tootling around in his electric car.

He does not need the fame, the money or the aggravation of producing an ambitious new stage show that he wants to take to London and eventually around the world. So why is he doing it? ‘Because it is fun!’ he cries. ‘I am 72 years old and I am only doing things I think are fun.’

Certainly, fun is the key word on this Friday night, where the Mamma Mia! The Party joint is rocking. The only thing to do is park one’s golden carriage of cynicism at the front door and relish the sheer implausibility of it all, for resistance against this onslaught of Abbaesque good cheer is futile.

During this immersive dining experience, we — the audience — are actually part of the show.

The conceit is that we are supposed to be customers dining at Nikos Taverna on the Greek island of Skopelos, where the Mamma Mia film was made.

The story is that Kicki (Anki Albertsson) was working on the film but stayed behind to marry Nikos (Michalis Koutsogiannakis) and help him run his taverna.

Business wasn’t doing so well, so she suggested holding Abba-themed nights to bring in the punters.

Reality vies with fantasy throughout the evening, and while there may be a dark side to Swedish nature, as evinced in their love of Scandi noir, glum detectives such as Wallander and the gothic horror of Stieg Larsson’s novels, it doesn’t take much to get the audience into the party mood.

Yet to look up at the battery of lights and equipment in the ceiling is to understand that we are actually on a stage set, not in a restaurant at all. One in which the attention to detail is extraordinary.

Tinted lights bathe everyone in a butterscotch glaze, a deliberate effect to make pasty northern Europeans look like tanned holidaymakers. The walls are painted Aegean blue, the tables are laid with checked cloths and big loaves of sesame studded country bread, just like they would be on Skopelos itself.

There is meze, octopus, big bowls of Greek salad and main course platters of grilled meats, all of it is served banquet-style. We dine as we watch the show which, as the script is in Swedish, I’m not really following.

Why is Kicki suddenly in a blue sequinned cape edged with white fur; who are the babes in the gold frocks, why are that young couple storming around looking overwrought?

I ask a bilingual lady at the next table if she can explain the plot. ‘Incest,’ she says, and I nearly choke on my olive.

Incest? Well, not quite. Kicki’s son from another relationship falls in love with Nikos’s daughter from his first marriage. Nikos’s Greek Orthodox grandmother disapproves because she feels that the family relationship is too close and that the romance should be forbidden.

Don’t even ask how songs such as Super Trouper and Tiger fit that narrative. Or why a water sprite climbs out of the restaurant’s courtyard fountain to do acrobatics with a hoop, while Nikos marches around dressed like a druid with gold leaves in his hair. I didn’t understand that bit, I tell Bjorn when we meet for

coffee the following day. ‘You are not supposed to,’ he says. ‘It is a dream sequence.’

Ulvaeus has been involved at every step of the process, from storyline to set to choosing the menu. ‘We had chefs, tastings, I tried everything, I even approved the hummus.’ And the Ouzo Flavoured Semolina Dream dessert?

‘That, too.’

Did he turn anything down?

‘Yes. A souvlaki (Greek kebab) thing they suggested, it was simply too dry!’ He confesses that the rehearsal period was not easy. After 40 or 50 previews, he began to wonder if he had made a terrible mistake. ‘I said to myself; “What the hell are you doing? This is going to be a disaster!” Then you press on, and just try to make it happen to fit your original vision.’

As far as the UK is concerned, Bjorn originally wanted to open in London’s West End, but it proved impossible to find a venue.

Now they are in talks to use the Coin Street Community Centre, near Waterloo Station on the South Bank. ‘I am hopeful,’ he says.

So am I. For a bit of jolly good cheer and the simple fun of a feel-good, Abba-fuelled show could do us all a world of good. Mamma Mia, here we go again? Fingers crossed.