EVITA Lyrics by Tim Rice; Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Some of the best drama in London this season can be found outside the West End's Prince Edward Theater. Just before curtain time each night, a mini-mob scene unfolds. Bejeweled women—British, American and Arab—pile out of Silver Shadow limos with Savile Row-suited escorts in tow. Sleazy-looking scalpers with cockney accents auction off their wares to desperate millionaires. Sad-faced teen-agers stare dolefully at the crowd, hoping that they might somehow crash the Prince Edward's lobby. No such luck. Only ticket holders are allowed past the theater's tuxedoed doormen, and the show is sold out until late fall.
The cause of all this commotion is Evita, a pop opera that opened to rave reviews in late June. A hotter West End commodity than either A Chorus Line or Annie, this song-and-dance account of Argentine First Lady Eva Perón (1919-52) may be the biggest London smash since Jesus Christ Superstar opened there six years ago. Like Superstar, which will soon pass Oliver! to become England's alltime longest-running musical, Evita is the creation of Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lyricist Tim Rice. Both shows also share a producer, Robert Stigwood, who is best known to American audiences as a force behind the movies Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
These are very lucky men, for Evita's London success far outstrips the show's merits. Though extravagantly staged by American Director Harold Prince, whom Stigwood imported for the occasion, Evita is a cold and uninvolving show that does little to expand the traditional musical comedy format or our understanding of a bizarre historical figure. Evita is often spectacular in its pretensions, but it is not even the best musical to touch on the subject of political repression. That honor belongs to two of Prince's Broadway productions—Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret.
Many of Evita's failings are a function of Rice's libretto, which never aspires to much more than a comic-book version of history. The author dutifully chronicles Evita's impoverished youth, her Buenos Aires radio career and her rise to power once married to Colonel Juan Perón (Joss Ackland). But Rice's point of view on his heroine is pure show biz; he's so agog he might as well be describing the career of Judy Garland. By the time Evita dies of cancer at age 33, we know she's a "legend," but we have no idea of how to judge her: to Rice, fascism seems to be more a cultural style than a political ideology. Elaine Paige, 30, the heretofore unknown actress who plays Evita, does little to help. Her clarion, belting voice has made her a star overnight in London, but she is a strident actress who fails to convey Evita's erotic magnetism.
Almost as offensive as the show's characterization of Evita is its use of Che Guevara (David Essex) as narrator. Though Argentine-born, Guevara had no prominent involvement in the history of his country during the Perón era and did not know Evita. Why Rice has included him is a mystery, since the writer seems to know little about him. In Evita, Che is a bland, almost apolitical character who, his guerrilla garb aside, might just as aptly be called the Stage Manager or, for that matter, Nick Carraway.