Jul 2
Review Round-Up: 'You Must Love Me' Sings Rachel Zegler in London's 'Evita'. And They Do
READ TIME: 18 MIN.
The new revival of "Evita" in London has been something of a marketer's dream-come-true due to the seeming genius of director Jamie Lloyd. His current Broadway revival of another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, "Sunset Blvd." – a production so stripped down that its title was even abbreviated – recently won Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical and for its star, Nicole Scherzinger, who beat out Audra McDonald for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical in the most celebrated awards competition in years. In it, his ample use of video projections and minimal sets and costumes, along with cuts, gave the show a fresh perspective. His staging of the show's title song had Tom Francis (who played Joe Gillis) wander backstage before heading out to 44th Street followed by a camera crew with the footage projected onto screens on the St. James Theatre stage.
It remained the theatrical coup of the season. But he is topping it in London with his take on Eva Perón's signature number, "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" by having star Rachel Zegler perform it on a public balcony of the London Palladium to crowds that gather every night around 9pm to see it. Her performance is broadcast on multiple screens on the stage. The result electrified the media, creating a debate that those who paid premium prices to see the show in the hall were being cheated, while others saw it as a metaphor for its populist heroine's connection to her Argentinean countrymen who worshipped her during her short stint as the wife of dictator Juan Perón some 75-years ago. (In the musical she sings it on a balcony of the Presidential mansion in Buenos Aires.) Some considered it a stunt, but it had its impact and helped wipe out any bad press lingering from Zegler's social media crisis earlier in the year when her political views on Gaza nearly had her canceled.
The word-of-mouth for the show during its preview period was the stuff blockbusters are made of, and the opening was deemed the biggest one in London in quite some time. The reviews are out and are mostly positive, with virtually every one heaping superlatives on Zegler and her cast members, notably newcomer Diego Andres Rodriguez as Che (the show's second lead), who was chosen by Lloyd from the ensemble of "Sunset Blvd." in New York for this sought-over role. The major criticism is that in his thrilling, arena-styled staging, the story gets lost in the process; but that is as much a problem with the property itself. When it was staged at Cambridge's American Repertory Theater two summers ago in a terrific production, the main complaint by those new to the musical was that the story was a muddle. Such are the same complaints here.
Below are a sample of the opening night reviews:
Houman Barekat; the New York Times
"She's a diamond in their dull gray lives," sings the Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón of his wife in 'Evita,' Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's sung-through musical about Eva Perón. She was a former matinee star whose popularity among the working classes bolstered support for her husband's government, and 'Evita' expresses some skepticism about political populism. Yet a new revival, directed by Jamie Lloyd and running at the London Palladium through Sept. 6, is emphatically populist in its relentless bombast, heavy symbolism and button-pushing grandiosity...
"...Rachel Zegler ('Snow White' and 'West Side Story'), making her West End debut, is a delight in the title role, strutting bossily in a black leather bra and hot pants while a chorus – representing soldiers or ordinary citizens – cavorts elaborately around her to a brassy tango-inspired soundtrack, delivered by an 18-piece band...
"Much preshow hype surrounded Lloyd's decision to stage the famous scene in which Evita sings the show's signature tune, 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina,' on the theater's exterior balcony; members of the public see the spectacle in the flesh, while theatergoers make do with video footage beamed onto a big screen in real time...
"Zegler sings impeccably, and brings an arch quality to Evita's hammed-up badness – a knowing, self-satisfied smirk here, an imperious raised eyebrow there. But in a rare moment of introspection, when she gazes fretfully into a backstage mirror, she does not wholly convince. This is as much the fault of the play as the performer: Evita has been given so little interior life that the foray into psychological realism feels abrupt and forced.
"'Evita' started life as a concept album in 1976, and when it was turned into musical theater a couple of years later, the transition was only partly realized – it feels more like a series of songs than a story told through song...
"None of this matters much. If this 'Evita' sometimes has the feel of an extended trailer, that's because its primary artistic goal is not to tell the story of Eva Perón, or even to say anything profound about authoritarianism, but to celebrate, as loudly as possible, the cultural phenomenon that is 'Evita,' the musical. It is an exercise in meta-kitsch, and, on those terms, it succeeds."
"Could she recoup her reputation in the role of a South American dictator's main squeeze who rose from humble origins as a 15 year-old tango 'dancer' to become Argentina's First Lady? The answer is a resounding yes. This is not just a great production of 'Evita' but one of the most exciting musicals I have witnessed in years.
"It's a gussied up version of Lloyd's first attempt at the musical 6 years ago. Rebooting his own production, he gets everything right. The music is thunderous yet clear - the band ranging from sumptuous semi-orchestral pomp to full-blooded stadium rock in the blink of an ear, with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's superb songs sounding freshly minted. Everyone's a winner, baby, that's for sure.
"Fabian Aloise's choreography is athletic and restlessly inventive in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz style and performed by an astonishingly supple ensemble. Diego Andres Rodriguez invests Che with scorchio sexuality, James Olivas as Perón is fiercely buttoned up until released by Eva. Both convey emotional weight as well as vocal power. Bella Brown as the discarded mistress pours her soul into 'Another Suitcase in Another Hall'...
"With side glances and a mischievously arched eyebrow, Zegler nails the idea that Eva Perón was a calculating actress playing a role until reality kicked in to unravel her.
"After his extraordinary reboot of 'Sunset Boulevard,' Lloyd has done it again. This is one for the history books. For Zegler, it's a personal triumph. If it doesn't lay the ghost of Snow White, nothing will."
"Director Jamie Lloyd has outraged some theatregoers, who evidently feel short-changed after paying good money to see Rachel Zegler as Eva Perón. In one scene, she wanders off stage and on to an outward-facing balcony to sing a magnetic reprise of 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' to the gathered crowd outside the theatre...
"It is no less than the director's biggest coup de theatre: the public itself is enlisted for his mise en scene of populist rallies, crowd hypnotism and authoritarian charm. The crowd might represent late 1940s Buenos Aires – or mid 2020s America under the spell of becoming "great again". Never mind complaints of a free show – maybe Lloyd should be paying them.
"Lloyd previously staged this Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (with lyrics by Tim Rice) at Regent's Park Open Air theatre in 2019. Then, it seemed like a dark high school musical, with stairs like bleachers and actors resembling flinty-eyed teens. This iteration has a streak of that but is bolder, more polished and pumped up.
"If a successful musical is simply about the singing, dancing and spectacle, this one soars. The choreography by Fabian Aloise, who has previously worked on three other Lloyd shows, is out-of-this-world imaginative. The ensemble mesmerise with their sexual energy and charismatic aggression...
"If you feel denied of the subtleties of story, character and commentary on populist power, you will still have an eye-popping night out. And the balcony scene is a stroke of genius."
The Standard; Nick Curtis
Five Stars out of Five
"Ignore the whingers and haters. Rachel Zegler is an absolute smash in Jamie Lloyd's thrilling revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's improbable hit musical about Argentina's populist, postwar first lady Eva Perón...
"The already infamous moment when she performs 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' from the Palladium balcony to a crowd outside – relayed to paying punters in the auditorium on a screen – is a bravura piece of directorial panache and social commentary from Lloyd. This is a finessed version of his stripped-back 'Evita' at the Open Air Theatre in 2019, the showmanship and expressionistic sensualism amped up, the whole thing supercharged by Zegler's white-hot presence...
"Lloyd mounts the show on a stage-wide staircase topped by the giant letters E-V-I-T-A, emblematic of the young María Eva Duarte's man-by-man climb from poverty to mononymous fame and power. Zegler appears in a bra-top, shorts and boots, sable hair bedraggled and a challenge curling her lip as Eva bed-hops upwards to the place where spotlights flare and streamer cannons explode. She only puts on the iconic blonde wig and diamonds – familiar from the real Evita, previous stage iterations, and Madonna on film – for the balcony anthem, indicating that it's a pose.
"If the sexual politics sound stuck in the 1970s, she's not the only one objectified. Evita's flirtatious, revolutionary opponent Che is played with cocksure swagger by Diego Andres Rodriguez, whose only recorded previous credit was in Lloyd's 'Sunset Blvd' on Broadway; he's beaten bloody, slowly disrobes during his slinky duet with Eva, and ends up in his pants covered in paint...
"Great theatre can be about many things: star quality, spectacle, the lightning-in-bottle capture of a moment, the alchemical power of song or speech on a bare stage. In this Evita, all those things come triumphantly together."
The Telegraph; Dominic Cavendish (behind a firewall)
"After enjoying huge success with his stripped-back 'Sunset Boulevard,' Jamie Lloyd works fresh, technically-dazzling magic on another Andrew Lloyd Webber classic...
"The result is a total triumph, dominated by a powerhouse, reputation-restoring performance from Zegler, 24, and stamina-testing choreography by Fabian Aloise (who deserves equal credit with Lloyd). Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musically gorgeous and gear-shifting 1978 account of Eva Perón's whirlwind life (1919-1952) – from provincial upstart to sainted First Lady of Argentina – thrives on emphasising what a circus it all was. But the wow-factor is knowingly pushed to the max here, both on the Palladium stage and on its outdoor balcony, where Zegler draws nightly crowds in the street below for her impactful mid-show rendition of Evita's signature tune, 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina,' which is captured live by an unobtrusive camera crew and projected on to a wide screen inside...
"Showing once again both the presence and vocal prowess that she brought to her break-out turn as María in Steven Spielberg's 2021 film of 'West Side Story,' Zegler makes Lloyd Webber's music sound better than ever. Her talent demands our rapture; equally, her mass seduction of the audience feels carefully plotted, enhancing the show's thematic thrust. Lloyd ensures the evening stokes a cult of personality – combining whistle-stop biography with a parable for our age of showbiz politics...
"Diego Andres Rodriguez's beautifully expressive Che (loosely, Guevara) is a cynical onlooker drawn into Evita's story; later we see him stripped to his underpants – a very Jamie Lloyd touch – and doused in the blue and white colours of Argentina's flag in paint-like goo. It's quite a scantily clad night, in fact: Zegler's Evita descends from on high dressed only in a black bra, hot pants and knee-high boots...
"Evita could easily be too cool for us to care about – yet the go-for-broke momentum reveals redeeming cracks of vulnerability. The demand to be adored eats Evita up, before cancer claims her. We get a glimpse of doubt as she sits alone at a dressing table and takes off her blonde wig. Then those fake tears turn to the real, poignant thing after she sits slumped, cradled by a fickle Perón, and sings the night's climactic weepie 'You Must Love Me.'
"As indeed, we must. This ranks as an all-time great revival. Viva 'Evita!' Viva Zegler!"
"In this hazy Palladium dreamspace, Eva and her nemesis-cum-narrator Che (Diego Andres Rodriguez) jostle over her legacy like two spirits wrestling in purgatory. Was she truly a woman of the people whose pragmatism sat underneath a bedrock of idealism, or was she some Machiavellian exploiter out to claim as much Argentine wealth and fame for herself as possible? The answer is as elusive as some of Lloyd's directorial choices. It's a show that has as much to say about how Eva is now perceived, as a result of Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musical, as it is about Eva herself...
"At the heart of it all is Zegler, only at the start of what is sure to be a sensational career. 'Evita' is a gigantic sing, but Zegler makes it look as easy as a Saturday matinee at a local production of 'Bye Bye Birdie'. She cruises through numbers like 'Rainbow High' and 'You Must Love Me' with style, giving her Eva a cynical, cheeky poise that explains her mass appeal and political seduction.
"Another star-in-the-making is Rodriguez, who left 'Sunset' on Broadway early to join Zegler in London. Almost never off-stage, he gues us through the ethereal world Lloyd paints.
"Would Broadway take to it? I expect a similar outcome to 'Sunset Blvd.', heady praise but perhaps with a few additional grumbles. Either way, Zegler will leave London high-flying, adored, and heavily garlanded."
Theatre Weekly; Greg Stewart
(Four Stars out of Five)
"Oh what a circus, oh what a show! Jamie Lloyd's 'Evita 'at the London Palladium is a bold, high-octane reimagining of the classic musical that pulses with energy and theatrical flair. With his now-signature (perhaps overused) style of minimalist set, sparse costumes, onstage cameras, enough confetti-to drown you, and a curtain call featuring a lead actor in his pants–Lloyd delivers a production that's visually arresting and musically exhilarating. But in its relentless drive to innovate, it occasionally sacrifices storytelling for spectacle.
"Rachel Zegler, making her West End debut as Eva Perón, is a magnetic performer with undeniable stage presence. Her Eva is all fire and flash, more pop diva than political operator. While her physicality is commanding, there's no shortage of hip swivels and pelvis thrusts, her characterisation lacks depth. Spending much of the show in her bra, Zegler's Eva feels more like a symbol than a fully realised character, and the production doesn't give her enough space to evolve. The result is a portrayal that's compelling to watch but emotionally elusive...
"That said, there are moments of brilliance. Chief among them is Diego Andres Rodriguez's phenomenal turn as Che. His performance is nuanced, powerful, and vocally superb, he brings a moral centre and emotional intelligence that anchors the entire production and is easily the standout of the evening. James Olivas also impresses as Juan Perón, offering a calm, authoritative presence that balances the surrounding theatricality.
"Fabian Aloise's choreography is a triumph. It's the heartbeat of the show; dynamic, inventive, and executed with thrilling precision. It's arguably the best work of his career and elevates every scene it touches...
"This Evita is not without its flaws, it's rushed, flashy, and sometimes narratively thin, but it's also thrilling, stylish, and full of theatrical bravado. Jamie Lloyd's vision may divide opinion, but it's never dull."
Time Out, London; Andrzej Lukowski
"... The first half of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's classic musical ends to the disorientating, super-amplified strains of 'A New Argentina'. In it, Zegler's Eva – a malevolent brunette hood rat in skimpy black leather with a howling, heavy metal delivery – eggs on her fascist beefcake husband Juan Perón (James Olivas) to take the Argentine presidency by any means necessary...
"Opening the second half, the balcony sequence is a study in pure artifice. Clad in flowing white dress and an elegant blonde wig, Evita – now the First Lady – faces the Argyll Street public with a beatific expression on her face, singing her great song of love and yearning for the country she's cynically worked her way to the summit of. The crowd are both Zegler's adoring public and in a brilliantly cynical stroke, they're also Evita's: the chance to see a star sing her song has essentially led to the public volunteering to serve as extras in the propaganda broadcast that we in the theatre are shown on a big screen. But the Eva the outside audience sees is a lie: wig, dress and her sense of empathy are torn off before she returns to the stage. It's a pitch-perfect mix of theatrical audacity, political satire and deft cinematography...
"There are a lot of things to be excited about. The balcony stream stuns. Fabian Aloise's choreography is phenomenal: playful, jerky and contorted, like sexy demonic possession. And my god, Zegler: even in an expensive production in a huge famous theatre, it feels remarkable that the fast-rising 24-year-old Hollywood star has deigned to spend four months doing an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for a crowd of whey-faced Brits. Strikingly angular – her face shapeshifts under Jon Clark's lights – Zegler's performance is brilliant and unsentimental...
"Okay then! Wham, bam, show of the year, right? Well, not quite. 'Evita' began life in 1976 as an album, and was only staged as a musical two years later. It is therefore sung through with no linking dialogue and a somewhat vibes-based approach to narrative that can often leap about confusingly. Most productions go out of their way to contextualise the songs via period sets and costumes. But Lloyd has no truck with that: with the cast dressed like they're off to some intimidatingly modern afterparty, each song is treated like a mini music video, staged on Soutra Gilmour's sleekly abstract black steps set. There are some wonderful ideas within this - and some heart-stoppingly brilliant bits where the colour blue suddenly explodes into the typical monochrome Lloyd/Gilmore palette - but none of it really helps you understand what's going on exactly, and you're pretty much entirely at the mercy of Rice's lyrics for context... which can be tough. They're good song lyrics, but a bit hazy as a guide to the ins and outs of mid-twentieth century Argentinian politics...
"Coherence isn't this Evita's strong suit. But there is so much that is good about it – from Zegler, to the choreography, to the timely antifascist sentiment, to That Scene – that I can look past a few negatives. It's not just the London theatre event of the summer, but the London event of the summer full stop."
(Three Stars out of Five)
"How ironic that the one moment when Rachel Zegler's doomed heroine seemed close to being a three-dimensional figure was during the song that didn't actually happen in front of us. As you've surely already heard by now, Jamie Lloyd has set 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' on the balcony above the entrance to the London Palladium in front of people in the street below. Those of us inside watch on a video screen.
"All credit to the hip young director for having the audacity to smack down the fourth wall. Thanks to Lloyd's ploy, nearly 50 years after the premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musical about the woman who became the kinder, gentler face of Peronism, the show is reaching out to a social media-savvy audience.
"That comes at a cost, though. Zegler, who otherwise spends a lot of the evening in little more than a leather bra and shorts, is reduced to a blank-eyed marionette for virtually the whole show. Her voice is fine but it has to compete with the musical director Alan Williams's wildly amplified orchestra. Too many songs whirl past in a semi-audible maelstrom.
"I'd be genuinely surprised if newcomers to the show have a clue what is happening for much of the evening as this dressed-down, concert-style spectacle, enhanced by Fabian Aloise's streetwise choreography – with a smidgen of twerking too – rattled through Eva Peron's journey from aspiring performer to the centre of power in 1940s Buenos Aires. Call it TikTok musical theatre, if you like. Everything is radically compressed, and for all the verve of the ensemble dancing you've no time to tease out the meaning of a song before the next one crashes down upon you..."
"The crowd roars and the vast, unsmiling curtain-call cast line the stage with the leading man bare-chested and covered in blood. No, this isn't director Jamie Lloyd's "Sunset Boulevard" – it's his 'Evita'. And that's not all that these two productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals share. With weapons-grade lighting and sound, this pulsating West End production is almost 'Evita – The Rock Concert.' But while it delivers in spades for the sensation-generation, something major is missing. That something is storytelling. Newcomers, likely to be baffled, need to read a synopsis beforehand since detailed characterization and plot are wholly sacrificed to spectacle.
"They must have excitement," sings Rachel Zegler's Eva Peron. That's this show's defining quality. Out go Hal Prince's original, legendary black-box production, and Michael Grandage's more Argentina-authentic revival (on which Lloyd was assistant director). The production it most resembles is the one Lloyd himself directed in 2019 at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre with the same design team, choreographer and set: a plain gray, stage-wide staircase of six risers...
"Before the show opened, the internet was awash with videos and much-clicked-on stories about "artistic differences" between the director and his leading lady. You'd never know it from Zegler's astonishingly assured, excitingly committed vocal performance. Her sound is carefully, thrillingly produced. Her money notes catapult the crowd and she's never less than exhilarating right though her wide vocal range...
"For all that the show belongs to Eva, she needs strong supporting men. Diego Andres Rodriguez prowls about, suitably sly and snarling as Che, the narrator, but he cannot have a relationship with a cipher. He ultimately strips down to briefs (black, natch) so that two men can murder him by pouring buckets of blue, white and red paint over his gleaming body – the colours of Peron's political party and the aforementioned blood. He fares better than James Olivas (as Peron himself), whose carefully displayed musculature cannot make up for a lack of gravitas. His song with the generals, "The Art of the Possible," is imaginatively staged but in story terms is indecipherable...
"Full marks to Lloyd's team for constantly whipping up audience excitement by maintaining resplendent aggression throughout. But in Rice and Lloyd Webber's most ambitious show – which charts not just rise of a complex (anti)heroine but populism curdling into fascism – it's hard not to feel that their material is his is, undoubtedly, a technically flawless achievement. And no one will complain about not knowing where their ticket price cash has been spent. But dazzling though it is, there's something faintly decadent about abandoning the depth of Rice and Lloyd Webber's strongest achievement for a thrill-ride display."
