Dressed for success: Malmö launches Roxette jukebox musical Joyride steered by Brits

Greeting visitors in the foyer of Malmö Opera is a formidable bronze sculpture of the Greek muse Thalia. Tonight, she holds a newly tied bunch of wonderful balloons. You could say she’s got the look but you’d be required to add a “la la la la la”. After all, this is the world premiere of Joyride, a new jukebox musical featuring a barrage of bangers by Swedish pop royalty Roxette.

Per Gessle, who formed the duo with Marie Fredriksson, is used to filling huge international arenas with the band’s power ballads and party anthems. But when we talk before the musical’s opening night, he points out that it is not the first time Roxette has been heard in an opera house – they played Sydney’s in 2015. The difference with a musical is the opportunity to work on such a “grand scale” with a 34-piece orchestra and resident team of craftspeople. “It costs a fortune to do this,” he says. “I’m happy that they sold so many tickets!”

Joyride runs until the end of April but is already close to selling out, such is Roxette’s standing as arguably the country’s second biggest band after Abba. The duo were in their pomp in the late 80s and early 90s when The Look and Listen to Your Heart became No 1 hits in the US and It Must Have Been Love, originally a Christmas single, was rejigged for a scene in Pretty Woman (with Julia Roberts quivering in a limo and Richard Gere brooding on a balcony).

“There’s a great sense of nostalgia” for Roxette, says the musical’s British director, Guy Unsworth, who highlights how the death of Fredriksson from cancer in 2019 has also deepened fans’ emotional connection to the music. “I’m excited, though, about the younger generation in the audiences who really love it. That’s a big thing over here because, of course, Roxette are a little bit like the band that Mum and Dad love.”

Gessle has fielded suggestions for a Roxette musical for a decade or so from the UK and the US. “Everything always fell through because of the scripts,” he says. “Lots of the scripts that we got were really dark for some reason. I felt like we should do something with a happy feeling.” The right source material came with Jane Fallon’s comic revenge novel Got You Back, adapted by Unsworth (after an original book by Klas Abrahamsson). The story follows two women, Stephanie and Katie, as they discover they are living with the same boyfriend, Joe, who is spending half his week in London and the other in Lincoln. If that sounds like a surprising plot for a happy drama it is an undoubtedly good fit for numbers about listening to your heart , spending your time and assessing The Big L , drawing on Gessle’s skill at writing pre- and post-breakup songs.

When Gessle discussed the song list with Unsworth he was surprised that the director suggested they use album tracks such as What’s She Like? and The First Girl on the Moon as well as the obvious hits. “Songs that I almost forgot about,” laughs Gessle. “I was really impressed that he had dug into the catalogue. The musical captures the idiosyncratic blend of goofy humour and lovesick melancholia that pop fans associate with the pixieish, shock-headed Gessle and the statuesque, peroxide-blonde Fredriksson.

What is clear from the start of the show is that Joyride is made with a superfan’s love. It is full of in-jokes and references: Dressed for Success, which accompanies Joe and Stephanie’s morning preparations, comes with revolve-stage choreography evoking commuting, performed by a trench-coated ensemble who recall the larkily marching dancers in the single’s video . There’s a red sportscar as in the Joyride promo (“Hello, you fool!” is one character’s catchphrase) and Fading Like a Flower features a line of hair-flicking female dancers in outsized white shirts who could have arrived straight from MTV’s heyday. A subplot resembling an especially outre episode of Emily in Paris involves a celebrity gossip magazine called the Look, a haughty star who is Dangerous and even a runaway bride – a nod, perhaps, to the movie that reunited Gere and Roberts.

With a script performed in Swedish (there are English surtitles), the musical keeps some of Fallon’s Britishisms and her locations so its more eccentric moments include a line of Lincoln farmers in wax jackets delivering “na na na”s. Some songs do a lot of heavy lifting and it’s best to just ride with the storyline’s implausibilities and savour Joakim Hallin’s arrangements that ramp up the soaring emotions. The verses of Crash! Boom! Bang! are powerfully delivered in turn by Jessica Marberger and Marsha Songcome, playing the two women in the love triangle, and other songs are similarly reframed. “A couple of Marie’s big ballads including Queen of Rain are sung by a guy [Alexander Lycke] which is interesting,” says Gessle. “Marie sang that about herself basically but [in the musical] he is saying it about a woman.”

In a nice detail, Stephanie and Joe’s daughter, Stella (Sara Stjernfeldt), is a budding singer-songwriter who we see composing a tune on her acoustic guitar. Gessle, who is used to a level of autonomy as a musician, found that this time “I had to let go, trust people and get to know a little bit more about how the musical world works because it’s a different style of singing … My first band came from the new wave scene in the 70s – that’s what’s in my DNA.” Unsworth says he wanted to find a balance between the band’s feelgood, uptempo numbers where, “everyone wants to sing and dance along” and the power ballads that “cut to the heart for a lot of people”. At the same time, he wanted to make sure that “the story is moving through the music” rather than the plot being regularly interrupted for song and dance breaks.

Earlier this year, Mamma Mia! celebrated 25 years in the West End; an estimated 70 million people have seen the Abba musical worldwide. Unsworth jokes that friends have asked him: “Is that the sort of little ghost that’s haunting you?” Roxette may not have quite the same reach but Gessle comments on their not-too-shabby monthly Spotify listeners (14.3m). He is about to tour South Africa and Australia with his outfit PG Roxette, performing the hits alongside Lena Philipsson, an old friend.

After Fredriksson’s death, Gessle “tried to figure out what to do with the catalogue” he explains. “I felt there were only two options left. One was just to close everything down and let it be; the other was to find a singer who can help me sing the songs and that’s easier said than done.” He and Philipsson talked at length about it. “I told her we’re not doing anything new – I’m hiring you to sing Roxette. It’s not about creating a new success.” And how does it feel, at the age of 65, to be still singing them? “Just really happy and proud,” he says, adding rather bashfully: “I wrote these songs, you know? I just feel like: why not play them if people want to hear? I’m not forcing anyone but the response has been tremendous.”

The tour can’t help but be a tribute of sorts to Fredriksson, much like Joyride, which towards the end features a projection of the singer’s face. “I remember buying Jesus Christ Superstar when I was a kid but this is new ground to me,” Gessle says. “Marie always liked musicals much more than I did.”

• Joyride: The Musical is at Malmö Opera until 27 April. Malmö Opera provided Chris Wiegand’s trip.