In terms of pure column inches, the balcony scene from Jamie Lloyd’s Evita is surely the biggest news to come out of the theatre world in years. Hacks the planet over have been entranced by the potent cocktail of star Rachel Zegler’s fame and the sheer ballsiness of Lloyd having her sing ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ for free to the good people of Argyll Street at 9pm each night from the London Palladium balcony.
There has also been a fantastic amount of bollocks written about the sequence, both by journalists and on social media. First, a tranche of articles suggesting ticket holders were furious that Zegler wasn’t singing the song to them in the theatre. Second, well-meaning social media types decreeing Lloyd had intended it as some sort of earnest way to big up Argentine First Lady Eva Perón’s woman-of-the-people status.
The second party was not entirely wrong, but the scene – which is, to be clear, astonishingly good – can only really be contextually appreciated if you’ve seen the one before it, which very much takes place in the theatre. The first half of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s classic musical ends to the disorientating, super-amplified strains of ‘A New Argentina’. In it, Zegler’s Eva – a malevolent brunette hood rat in skimpy black leather with a howling, heavy metal delivery – eggs on her fascist beefcake husband Juan Perón (James Olivas) to take the Argentine presidency by any means necessary.
It’s remarkable that the Hollywood star has deigned to spend four months doing an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for a crowd of Brits
Opening the second half, the balcony sequence is a study in pure artifice. Clad in flowing white dress and an elegant blonde wig, Evita – now the First Lady – faces the Argyll Street public with a beatific expression on her face, singing her great song of love and yearning for the country she’s cynically worked her way to the summit of. The crowd are both Zegler’s adoring public and in a brilliantly cynical stroke, they’re also Evita’s: the chance to see a star sing her song has essentially led to the public volunteering to serve as extras in the propaganda broadcast that we in the theatre are shown on a big screen. But the Eva the outside audience sees is a lie: wig, dress and her sense of empathy are torn off before she returns to the stage. It’s a pitch-perfect mix of theatrical audacity, political satire and deft cinematography. It strikes me as remarkable that anyone watching inside could possibly feel short changed, especially as the song is reprised several times – I suspect the negative headlines were based on troll posts or people so incurious about theatre that maybe they shouldn’t have bothered.
There are a lot of things to be excited about. The balcony stream stuns. Fabian Aloise’s choreography is phenomenal: playful, jerky and contorted, like sexy demonic possession. And my god, Zegler: even in an expensive production in a huge famous theatre, it feels remarkable that the fast-rising 24-year-old Hollywood star has deigned to spend four months doing an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for a crowd of whey-faced Brits. Strikingly angular – her face shapeshifts under Jon Clark’s lights – Zegler’s performance is brilliant and unsentimental. Rice’s lyrics always acknowledged the fact that Eva’s rise was shady, but most productions – including Lloyd’s 2019 Open Air Theatre version, which this is adapted from – tend to take a relatively indulgent, ‘yes she did these things but wow she pulled herself up from nothing’ view. Zegler’s Evita is simply not a nice person: a ruthless climber who leaves a string of ruined lives in her path and who serves as something of a Lady Macbeth figure to her authoritarian husband. The populist Peróns were on the softer end of actual fascism, but it’s to the credit of Lloyd and Zegler how unsparing this production is with them. Her range is also genuinely jaw-dropping: she’s a showtunes gal and you expect the mannered beauty of ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’, but it’s the leather-lunged rock stuff that’s the real revelation.
Okay then! Wham, bam, show of the year, right? Well, not quite. Evita began life in 1976 as an album, and was only staged as a musical two years later. It is therefore sung through with no linking dialogue and a somewhat vibes-based approach to narrative that can often leap about confusingly. Most productions go out of their way to contextualise the songs via period sets and costumes. But Lloyd has no truck with that: with the cast dressed like they’re off to some intimidatingly modern afterparty, each song is treated like a mini music video, staged on Soutra Gilmour’s sleekly abstract black steps set. There are some wonderful ideas within this - and some heart-stoppingly brilliant bits where the colour blue suddenly explodes into the typical monochrome Lloyd/Gilmore palette - but none of it really helps you understand what’s going on exactly, and you’re pretty much entirely at the mercy of Rice’s lyrics for context… which can be tough. They’re good song lyrics, but a bit hazy as a guide to the ins and outs of mid-twentieth century Argentinian politics.
In Lloyd’s 2019 version the character of Che – a sort of avatar of the ‘true’ working classes – felt well integrated into the show, a knowing conspirator to a less serious Evita. Here, Diego Andres Rodriguez’s rugged Che assumes more of a Jiminy Cricket role, the conscience to Zegler’s heartless and unappreciative Eva. But their distant and uneasy relationship makes Che’s part more confusing than usual, although the dark final twist to their relationship still pays off.
Coherence isn’t this Evita’s strong suit. But there is so much that is good about it – from Zegler, to the choreography, to the timely antifascist sentiment, to That Scene – that I can look past a few negatives. It’s not just the London theatre event of the summer, but the London event of the summer full stop.
