‘Evita’ employs original staging
One thing I will say about the touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita”: I feel like I have finally seen it staged the way it was intended.
That’s because this tour uses the original staging by Hal Prince. In fact, this entire tour was supervised by Hal Prince. Also, original choreographer Larry Fuller came back to do the direction and choreography.
So we get to see the full multimedia spectacle that is “Evita.”
A giant screen flies down from the loft to show clips of adoring Argentine crowds and the objects of their adoration: Eva and Juan Peron. It serves to make the otherwise abstract “Evita” seem more rooted in reality: There really was an Eva Peron, and this, in black and white, is what she looked like.
Prince jump-kicks this story in dozens of small ways and in several big ones. Peron is introduced in a playful and extremely effective musical-chair scene (only one colonel is left at the end).
A big public rally scene shows Eva high above the crowd, looking like a fairytale queen, from the front and then, in a clever twist of perspective, also from the back.
Prince neatly encapsulates the military’s distrust of Peron by having a toy-soldier-like squadron strut about on stage and mutter imprecations in military march time.
Yet even with all of this stagecraft and dazzling visual imagination, I’m still left with essentially the same opinion of “Evita.” It’s not a great musical.
Webber and lyricist Tim Rice have simplified this complex historical story to absurd proportions. Suffice to say that Juan Peron comes off as a benign figure here.
Che Guevara is the narrator, for reasons never fully explained.
The only character developed to any extent is Eva. She, at least, comes across as a fascinating mixture of minx, gold-digger and saint.
Kathy Voytko gives a strong nuanced performance as Eva. She is especially good at showing the steel behind Eva’s cotton-candy image.
When Eva was crossed, she could shoot daggers with her eyes that probably made it all the way into the balconies. Voytko was not quite as effective from a musical standpoint, mainly because of a tendency to sound shrill in the higher registers.
The audience gave the biggest ovation, rightly so, to Bradley Dean as Che. Che’s presence is vital from a dramatic standpoint, if a bit puzzling otherwise.
Che serves as the show’s conscience, its gadfly, its Greek chorus. Dean plays Che with a fine combination of intellectual disdain and pure animal energy. He punctures the pretentious, sees through the facades, and gets beaten by goons for his trouble.
This is an Actor’s Equity (union) production, which means it had a veteran, experienced cast. This was a marked improvement over the young, if energetic, casts that arrive with some of the non-Equity tours.
Opening night seemed to have a sound-mix problem, which rendered large portions of the lyrics unintelligible.
I am not totally convinced, however, that the music itself contributes to this muddled sound. Webber and Rice have never been known for mating music and words seamlessly.