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Twenty-on years after the original stage production, Andrew Lloyd Webber is bringing Evita back to the West End, but this time with a real Argentine actress playing Eva Perón. Roger Foss meets the new Evita, Elena Roger.
"Please be patient with me, I am not too well speaking," is the first thing I hear Elena Roger say as both hands reach out to greet me when I arrive at the south London rehearsal room where she's spent a long day running through the score of Vita with her co-star Philip Quast. Like almost everybody else in the UK; I only know Elena Roger from her rendition of 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' on the Michael Parkinson programme in March, when Evita's composers Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice introduced their new red-headed singing discovery to the British public.
It was an accomplished performance from the diminutive Argentine actress. Her haunting vocal range, combined with that tangy accent, hit every note just right in Eva Perón's famous emotional speech on the balcony of the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires in 1946, when her husband Juan Perón was inaugurated as president.
Right now, when I tell her how confident she appeared, Roger smiles and admits that, although she had already sung 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' at the London press launch for Evita accompanied by Lloyd Webber himself at the piano, her tiny frame was quaking with nerves when she stepped in front of the TV cameras. "I was so nervous because it was the very first time that I had sung the song with an orchestra and also in front of the public, so it was a great experience. I felt very comfortable in the end. now I approach the song just like a speech in a play."
By now, any of Roger's initial worries about being "not too well speaking" are evaporating fast. Warm physicality exudes from her slimline frame -"tactile" is probably the best word to describe how she loves to gently prod you every now and then to emphasise a point. "Singing in English is much easier for me than speaking in English," she goes on, as she taps my knee. "I've been working with the musical director on my pronunciation because they want to keep my Argentine accent, but obviously the audience has to understand what I am saying."
Probably more than any other actress playing Evita in English - from Julie Covington who sang on the original 1975 concept album (released one year after Roger was born), and Elaine Paige, who famously created the role on the London stage in 1978, to Patti LuPone on Broadway, and then Madonna in the film version - Elena Roger, at 31, has had to face more than just the Lloyd Webber music. "There are a lot of things I have to think about. I have to learn the lyrics in English, the pronunciation, the meaning of the words I am saying and the meaning of the words the other characters are saying. I can't wait to reach the point where I can put my heart and soul into everything."
She's also just got used to phoning home every day to speak to her parents in Buenos Aires (her mother she describes as a housewife and her father is a retired salesman) and her brother and sister. And she's discovering what living in London is like for the first time , although anyone with a sharp eye for talent might have spotted her in the ensemble in the Tango Por Dos company's spring season at the Peacock Theatre in 2002. "I was here for a month and a half then, but my colleagues were al Argentine so it was just like being back home and not being in London at all."
Then she pauses for a moment, taps my other knee and says with a rush of feeling: "I have to tell you. I am so excited. I am so very happy that I have been given this job."
Apart from appealing to a young audience and being about the same height as the real Eva Perón - and almost the same age as Eva when she died of cancer aged 33 in 1952 - you can see why , after auditioning a string of British and American actresses, Elena Roger is the Evita of choice for her producer André Ptaszynski of the Really Useful Theatre Company. Ptaszynski says he aims to "show a different side" to Hal Prince's groundbreaking 1978 production: "We are bringing colour, dance and a new Argentina to London audiences." And as Roger's director Michael Grandage, noted at that press launch, "she brings something to it that delivers an authenticity we couldn't dream about when we started the casting process."
He's right. The mood music of the new production might be more tango-inspired than the original, but you couldn't get a more authentic stage Evita than this Buenos Aires-born performer. Roger's first professional job in Argentina was in the ensemble of The Hunchback of Notre dame, performed in Luna Park, the place where Eva and Juan Perón first met at a charity concert. She enthuses: "During Evita rehearsals, we have been looking through history books and photos of Buenos Aires at the time an I just think, my god, this is my city - I will be singing about my country."
Like most Argentines, Roger's family still retains the folk memory of Eva and Juan Perón and the Perónist political movement they created during a period of national turmoil. "For me this show is about my own history. I didn't live through the Perónist period obviously, but I heard a lot about it though my parents and grandparents".
She explains how opposing family loyalties reflected the political divide in the country during the Forties and early Fifties. "On my father's side, my grandparents lived in the south of the country and they were definitely Perónist. My grandfather was just a post office worker but was able to buy his home during this period. He also told me how he would be sent toys for the Indians who lived nearby. For him, Perón and Eva did things for poor people. But my other grandfather was an Italian socialist and had escaped to Argentina from Mussolini's Italy. To him, Perón was another dictator."
Aside from being a real Argentinean, over the past ten years she has developed an impressive showbiz CV at home, including lead roles in Saturday Night Fever, Les Misérables, Nine and the highly successful Mina…Che cosa sei, about Mina, the legendary Italian singer. On television, she recently won and award for Best Actress for her role in the series Men of Honour.
Maybe that's why she says she sometimes feels "compromised" playing Evita. "My life has changed, but I didn't know this would happen to me. I wasn't looking to find a job abroad because I had plenty of work in Argentina, but when this opportunity came along, I just thought it is great to perform in the West End for the first time playing an important woman in the history of my country."
Her brother and sister will be coming to see her on the first night at the Adelphi Theatre. Her parents fly over later. Is she daunted by the thought that the eyes of Argentina and the entire world will be on the new Evita? "Yes, I am, but I think only about what I enjoy doing, which is to perform. I put all the eyes looking at me to one side".
Then she pauses, taps me on the knee again and gives me one of those devastating Elena Roger smiles. "You know, I will just get on with it and let others decide whether I am good or bad in this role. I don't care actually because I am doing by best and doing what I like to do".
© Theatregoer Magazine Ltd.
