Olivier Awards 2014: ABBA members to perform with Mamma Mia! cast

Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus will take to the stage on Sunday night

Mamma Mia! has been a runaway success in the West End (Getty Images)

ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus are teaming up with the London cast of Mamma Mia! to close Sunday night’s Olivier Awards.

The one-off collaboration will mark both the 15th birthday of the popular stage musical and the 40th anniversary of the Scandinavian group’s Eurovision win with “Waterloo”.

Mamma Mia!s Kim Ismay, who plays Tanya, told Digital Spy that the news was “extraordinary”, describing her excitement as “on a scale of one to ten, about 600”.

The band’s female members, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog will not be joining for a full ABBA reunion.

This year’s Best New Musical nominees – The Book of Mormon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Once and The Scottsboro Boys – will all take to the stage, as will the BBC Radio 2 Audience Award contenders – Matilda the Musical, Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables.

Other performances at the Royal Opera House will come from Broadway icon Bernadette Peters and globally-acclaimed tenor Joseph Calleja.

The annual Olivier Awards celebrate the best in theatre, with 2014 nominees including Jude Law, Judi Dench, Rory Kinnear, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Gatiss and Lyndsey Turner.