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On a very rainy afternoon in London we watched Evita for the fourth and final time. It was the third different actress we had seen in the title role, although, in this case, it was Abbie Osmon's second showing for us. My husband actually bought us tickets in the front row center seats at the door that day. He was very unhappy when I wouldn't sit in them. There was no one else in the first two rows. He didn't grasp how that made us look an awfully lot like stalkers, especially considering this was our fourth show. At home I work with the community and high school theaters as the costumer director and those are my normal seats. The students like to have someone they know in front, it makes them relax. Anyway, safely seated in the H row, we were able to watch the show without the crazies from Saturday night. Although I am used to seeing productions several different times, it isn't very often I get to experience such a range of characters in the title role.
Abbie Osmon is a very sweet Eva Peron. I think that this works every nicely for her in the second half of the production. During the balcony scene immediately after 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina', when she is trying to convince the crowd that she serves Peron and is still one of them, I believe is her best moment of the show. I liked her performance of that scene best of all three actresses. If you have only seen one actress or the other performing in this show, the most interesting thing I found was that they have two totally different choreography scenarios for the show depending upon the actress, most noticeably for the tango and the wheelchair scenes.
When we saw Jodie Jacobs perform, it was the first time I had seen Evita ever, so I was learning the story along with watching her perform. I was very impressed with her meaty performance; she really captured the sleazier side of Eva Peron during the first act. Right from the beginning with Magaldi through throwing out the mistress, she definitely gave Eva a conniving personality that enhanced the show.
Matt Rawle was the biggest mystery walking into the theater. The only thing we knew about him came from the Evita reviews, so it was hard to know what to expect. Being from the US, I hadn't even gotten a copy of the CD yet. What an incredible performer. I love the "She's not coming back to you" section of 'Oh What a Circus'. Plus, some of the notes he hit in 'And the Money Kept Rollin In' were amazing. 'Goodnight and Thank You' is a wonderful song to watch performed live, but I think the quality comes though better on the cd. This is definitely an actor I would go out of my way to see in another production! He would deserve a stand ovation all by himself, but unfortunately, we learned that they don't do that in London for any shows; we quit trying about halfway though our trip.
Now, to go to a show where we didn't know the story or the music, we had to have a reason, and that of course, was to see Philip Quast perform live. And, alas, most of my favorite parts are not on the cd, such as the wedding scene where Peron is talking a about a dream of just going off and being together doing crossword puzzles (very sweet) and Eva says that she has had that Nightmare too! "The inconvenience of having to get a majority" is one of the best lines in the show. The look on PQ's face when his says it is perfect. Since an awful lot of his performance is done through his expressions, our stall seats definitely gave us an advantage over the upper circle seats we bought for the first show. Those were the only seats we could really see the dancing to full advantage, though. My favorite performance was the one with Elena Roger. This was the one with the full tango! My husband leaned over and said it was perfect. Obviously Philip has gotten very comfortable with his dancing during the run of the show; he is much more relaxed than it shows in the video on the Evita website.
Elena Roger brings an entirely new level of quality to the show when she performs.
Small details that you don't notice when she isn't on stage suddenly appear when she is there. I think the most obvious to me was during the 'Waltz for Eva and Che' as the dance was progressing, you could see her getting sicker, so that by the time she got to the end of the song, "to a body that's falling apart", she had worked up to it. The same was true with "I'll make a great vice president." It was a wonderful scene when she performed it, getting sicker and feebler throughout the entire scene, so that by the time she collapsed, it was very emotional. PQ, even though he had always had a wonderful performance during that part of the show, was able to build off of that emotion also and bring an intensity to the scene that we hadn't seen in any of the shows before. It was the only show we were at where the audience was actually in tears, including a big burley 20 something man sitting right next to me. There is no question as to why she is the star of this show!
The ensemble cast in this show is incredible also. Greg absolutely loved Magaldi. Whenever he talks about the show, he has to talk about the "one hit wonder". We also saw Lorna Want as the Mistress three times, and she was incredible, too. We really did intend to only see this show twice, but do to rain and timing, we ending up there so much that I feel like I know many of the cast members personally, just from seeing them on stage so much. I definitely talked to the lobby crew enough to know them. By the way, if anyone from the Adelphi Theater is reading this, the soap in the ladies room needs to be refilled.
Finally, when we were leaving the show on the very first day, my husband, who is as big of a PQ fan as I am, said to me, "Philip Quast didn't have that big of a role in this show. We'll have to come back to London to see him in something else!"
