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Little bigger than a winter woodcock, Elena Roger has a beaky nose and two shoulders as white as hotel soap.
Dancing partners engage her in a lift and find themselves almost hurling her into the gods, she is so light.
Any shorter and she could double as the little girl who sings a weepy solo in Andrew Lloyd-Webber's 1970s classic about Eva Peron. Tiny though she be, with the bone structure of this fragile gamebird, Argentine Senorita Roger is big, big news. She opened in the lead in Evita last night and she's going to make this fine musical, oddly overlooked in recent years, a great hooter of a hit all over again.
'Don't Cry For Me Argentina', 'Another Suitcase In Another Hal'l, 'I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You', 'And The Money Kept Rolling In': this early Lloyd-Webber is jammed with songs.
Michael Grandage's production takes 25 minutes to break the seal, but then comes Buenos Aires and Senorita Roger hits full throttle.
She starts the song not much more than a graduate of the chorus line. She ends it a top star. It was an exciting moment at last night's splashy opening.
Her voice is not the sweetest of singing flutes. In the higher register it does not exactly become pinched, but it loses some of its curves. Her looks are not A-grade glamour.
Her mouth and lips are bigger than a perfectionist might deem desirable.
What she has, though, is a sparky charge of talent. You notice it when she kicks her legs like the blades of a flick knife. You notice it when, such a titch, she hoofs up to front of stage flanked by beefy boys playing soldiers.
Her Eva is credible as a former working-class 'descamisada'.
This is a first-rate Evita. Philip Quast brings touches of Robert Maxwell to Peron.
The ensemble is well-drilled and spares us the ivory grins. Paule Constable's lighting throws beautiful browns and yellows on to Christopher Oram's grand Buenos Aires balconies.
And The Money Kept Rolling In?
I bet it will do for this show.
© Associated Newspapers Ltd
