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The second coming of Evita is triumphant thanks to hotter Latin beats and its fiery new star
It's been tangoed. Evita, first seen in London 28 years ago, has been given new Latin rhythms by its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and gained a huge - the bigger for being diminutive - new Argentinian star in Elena Roger. Michael Grandage's rapid, dusky, rough-tongued production is a revelation.
It sounds like the dodgiest of ideas: musicalising the careers of the fascist Juan Peron and his doxy-turned-wife. But in this incarnation, Evita - the last show on which Lloyd Webber collaborated with Tim Rice - is the perfect expression of its heroine.
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But Roger has strong support. Philip Quast is impressive as a rumbling-voiced Peron, blank-faced and full of unexamined power: in one of the whip-sharp dance scenes choreographed by Rob Ashford he picks Roger up in a tango as if he were throwing a matchbox into the air.
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