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Lloyd Webber's 1978 musical Evita based on the celebrated, mythological life of Eva Peron is revived for the first time in the West End since its original production by Hal Prince and starring Elaine Paige. Evita predates all those highly staged musicals of the 1980s with falling chandeliers, revolutionary barricades and onstage helicopters, although it ran in the West End for ten years. It still has the wonderfully witty lyrics of Tim Rice in what was his and Lloyd Webber's last collaboration after Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, the abortive Jeeves and Wooster.
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Michael Grandage gets a moving performance out of Elena Rogers in her wheelchair scenes. Evita's new star not only can sing but can act as well. Matt Rawle is sultry and moody with his slow rock numbers and Philip Quast sees all of Peron's military bluster reduced to helplessness in the face of his wife's cancer.
