Review Round-up: Do Critics Adore Argentine Evita? Date: 22 June 2006
Michael Grandage’s much-anticipated revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s hit 1978 musical Evita at the West End’s Adelphi Theatre, with Argentine actress Elena Roger taking the title role alongside Philip Quast as Juan Peron and Matt Rawle as narrator Che Guevara, opened last night (21 June 2006, previews from 2 June) to a standing ovation from a star-studded audience (See Today’s Other News for 1st Night Photos and WOS TV).
Evita is based on the life and times of Eva Peron, the second wife of Argentine dictator Juan Peron. It chronicles her life as one of Argentina’s most complex and powerful public figures, against a backdrop of political unrest, until her death of cancer aged 33 in 1952. Roger is joined in the cast of Grandage’s staging by Philip Quast as Juan Peron and Matt Rawle as narrator Che Guevara (See News, 30 Jan 2006).
The musical premiered, with Elaine Paige playing Eva, at the West End’s Prince Edward Theatre in 1978 where it ran for seven years. In 1996, Alan Parker’s film version starred Madonna, Jonathan Pryce and Antonio Banderas. In addition to the original score – which includes classics such as “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” and “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” - Grandage’s new production features, for the first time on stage, the Oscar-winning “You Must Love Me”, which was written especially for Parker’s film and became a Top Ten single.
Overnight critics agreed Elena Roger was “high flying, adored” in the title role, and were also impressed with Christopher Oram’s set and Rob Ashford’s dynamic choreography. While some were not quite bowled over by the Rice and Lloyd Webber’s musical, most enjoyed being lost in Grandage’s “New Argentina”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com - “With an Argentinian, Ms Roger, playing the lead, Lloyd Webber and his co-orchestrator, David Cullen, using a much more string-based and guitar-led rhythm section, have gone back to tango basics. So, for that matter, has the brilliant choreographer Rob Ashford, whose funeral chorus at the announcement of Eva’s death… segues silkily in flashback into her relationship with a lounge singer… Roger hits the heights in all the right places, exuding a firm interior charm as well as a knowing, calculated aura that’s new to the role. Tiny as a bird, she soars to the challenge. And she dances magnificently, buoyed along by a superbly drilled chorus and some genuinely breathtaking moments of ensemble staging. There’s no more exciting performance in London: a truly great musical has been famously restored.”
Sheridan Morley in the Daily Express - Morley loved Elena Roger’s “dazzling British debut.” As for the show itself, “Rice rightly takes the first credit. The musical was his idea, and it’s brilliantly cynical, witty lyrics set the tone for what has become in the new staging a darker show… Philip Quast is impressive… but the evening belongs to Roger, who is mesmerising from the beginning…. All in all this is a brilliant rediscovery of a show we thought we knew, but whose dark heart we had overlooked.”
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail - “Tiny though she be, with the bone structure of this fragile gamebird, Argentine Senorita Roger is big, big news…. What she has… is a sparky charge of talent… This is a first-rate Evita.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph - Spencer hugely enjoyed the “outstanding revival from Michael Grandage, and a shocking great star performance from the diminutive, authentically Argentinian Elena Roger…. Again and again we are shown what a manipulative, self-serving amoral little minx she was… Again and again, though, we find ourselves falling for her dangerous allure…. Rice’s wit seems to have helped Lloyd Webber to combine his familiar lush and yearning romanticism with a welcome astringency… I have a strong suspicion that Evita is going to be a huge and durable hit all over again.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian - Less impressed, Billington found that while “watching Michael Grandage’s perfectly decent revival, one becomes aware of the dramatic insubstantiality of the show… to do justice to Eva’s story would require a first-rate dramatist. But Rice’s lyrics, even though verbally nimble, never give us enough information and seem torn between contradictory attitudes: admiration for Eva’s starry glamour and dismay at the demagoguery and crypto-fascism of which she was a part.” According to Billington, while the songs are “some of Lloyd Webber’s best… a musical is more than a score.” As for Roger, the Argentine “has expressive eyes and teeth and dances with real verve” but she’s not the star of the show – “the best feature of the evening is Christopher Oram’s design, which sumptuously recreates the wrought-iron balconies and architectural grandeur of Buenos Aries.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent - “The piece not only survives but thrives on the violent eruption of reality that comes in the diminutive shape of Elena Roger. As she charts the anti-heroine's progress from trashy opportunist to second wife (and First Lady) of the fascist Juan Peron and then to folk saint, Roger is simply sensational… Michael Grandage, one of our best directors, must have had to pinch himself to believe that Roger actually had dropped into his lap. His powerful production is full of acid humour, alert to the recklessness of a show that leaves itself open to the charge of glamourising fascism and of treating the well-heeled audience with a cynicism similar to that with which Eva and Juan Peron manipulated the shirtless masses.” Oppostite Roger, “Philip Quast, who is in excellent voice, makes a wonderfully uneasy President.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard - “I am a touch ashamed to admit I have fallen head over heels for Evita again, with Michael Grandage's dynamic production offering a charismatic title role performance, ripe for superlatives, by unknown Argentinian Elena Roger… Her performance, which conveys in song and dance the exuberance of a sexual adventuress and the ardour of the presidential saviour she wished to become, brought first nighters to their feet. For me, though, it only takes those famous songs to bowl me over.”
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