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The backhanded salute to Eva Peron that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice produced in 1978 was their last major collaboration and maybe their best. And I'm not just saying that because I can't get the famous song at the show's centre out of my head. Indeed, its presence is particularly annoying because right now I want Argentina to start crying, this time at an 8-0 defeat by England.
There's no doubt that Evita was a fascinating character. One of the show's paradoxical strengths is that its creators can't make up their minds about her. Yes, she ruthlessly slept her way from poverty to the top and did all that she could to manipulate the last of many lovers, Juan Perón, into power. Yet when she says (or, this being a sung-through show, sings) that, “I am Argentina”, is it just hubris? Was her bond with the descamisados, or shirtless ones, simply cynicism? Michael Grandage's production and Elena Roger's performance keep us wondering — as we're still wondering about Eva's upper-crust English heir, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Roger is Argentinian herself and quite a revelation. Philip Quast's Perón looms over her like a brontosaurus over a stick-insect, but, whether she's shimmering in triumph or preparing for a poignant death, it's Roger who commands the stately marble and elegant iron fretwork of Christopher Oram's set. She has a grin the size of her body, and it can look flirtatious, sassy, voracious or delighted, depending on circumstances. There's also a brashness in her voice, at times so jarring that I thought my ears were being attacked with an electric screwdriver — but then again, wasn't that Evita?
She can also dance, and should dance more, for the show's variations on the tango are another strength. Here, just about everyone performs it, from mourners at Eva's funeral to Quast's big, flashy Perón, who ends a symbolic dance with a fellow officer by waving a white handkerchief, then kneeing him in the groin. But the stage musical is a lot less sure than Alan Parker's movie at chronicling the era's politics. Perón's arrest and imprisonment are missing, as indeed is everything about Eva's illegitimacy and deprived background.
Never mind. Never mind that Matt Rawle, a sweatily unshaven narrator inexplicably called Che, could deliver more fact and less easy scepticism. It's rare and refreshing to get a musical that, as well as being awash with alluring music, interests itself in politics, especially foreign politics. And here, too, the evidence is paradoxical. Were the Peróns simply Fascist demagogues or, just for a time, did they give the shirtless a voice as well as some shirts? This riveting show, like history itself, still hasn't a definitive answer.
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