EVA PERON SUPERSTAR
Newsweek July 10, 1978
by James N. Baker with Anthony Collings in London

Puccini would have snapped it up--the true-life story of an Argentine girl who clawed her way from a poverty-stricken childhood to the heights of political power and glamour, only to die at 33. But this is the age of rock, and the lurid life of the late Eva Perón has been embraced by producer Robert Stigwood, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, the team that gave the world Jesus Christ Superstar. The result is Evita, a rock opera that has become London's biggest homegrown musical hit in years.

Actually, Evita--like Superstar--began as a record album and was belatedly brought to pop theatrical life. Released eighteen months ago, the album bombed in the U.S. but sold tremendously in Europe, yielding a No. 1 single in Eva's climactic anthem, 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.' Consequently, the audiences packing London's Prince Edward Theatre tend to enter, as well as exit, humming snatches of Lloyd Webber's score, an inventive pastiche of soft rock, pop and Broadway with a Latin flavor. But what they really walk out with are the visions of a dazzling debut by an unknown named Elaine Paige in the title role and the spectacular staging masterminded by the wizard of Broadway, director Harold Prince.

'Prince's staging is a miracle,' wrote the Guardian's critic Michael Billington, 'which every British musical director ought to go and study with notebook in hand.' Evita opens with the Argentine masses mourning Eva's untimely death in 1952, then flashes back to 1934 when at 15, she seduces a small-time nightclub singer who reluctantly takes ber out of the sticks to the splendor and bright lights of Buenos Aires. Sings Rice's Eva, a real phrasemaker: "I wanna be a part of BA/Buenos Aires--Big Apple!'

A series of brilliant numbers--the show has no 'book' as such--chronicles the climb of Eva and her husband, Col. Juan Perón (Joss Ackland), to the top, their rousing of the workers, their war on the aristocracy, Eva's glittering 'rainbow tour' of Europe, her apotheosis as 'Santa Evita' to Argentina's hungry children and her eventual physical collapse from cancer. During 'Goodnight and Thank You,' a song that illustrates her sexually propelled rise to movie stardom, Prince shows a succession of lovers exiting through the revolving door of Eva's boudoir with the heroine emerging each time in progressively fancier peignoirs. The colonel's power machinations are dramatized as a game of musical chairs.

Revolutionary: Along the way are several stunning ballads (the show's best song, 'Another Suitcase in Another Hall,' is sung by one of Perón's discarded mistresses) and the historically impossible comentary of Che Guevara (pop star David Essex). This cute little revolutionary is on hand to point out the worms in Eva's ermine--her need for adoration ('Why try to govern a country when you can become a saint?'), her skill at crowd manipulation ('One has to admire the stage management').

For all of Che's running acerbidity about its controversial heroine, Evita remains determinedly soft-focus about its controversial heroine. One London critic, Robert Cushman of The Sunday Times, complained that 'there is no knowing whether she left Argentina better or worse than she found it; the place looks much the same throughout.' As to whether or not Eva was power mad or genuinely idealistic, even all-knowing Che isn't sure. 'I can't tell you what to say,' he announces in the end.

Political Messages: But lyricist Tim Rice, who was also accused of straddling the fence in Superstar, defends the show's political integrity, 'If your subject happens to be one of the most glamorous women who ever lived, you will inevitably be accused of glamorizing her. The only political messages we hope will emerge are that extremists are dangerous and attractive ones even more so.' 'The show doesn't make her out to be a good woman,' insists Elaine Paige. 'You leave thinking she's wonderful and when you get to the subway you say, 'Wait a minute, she wasn't.'

An out-of-work veteran of chorus lines and TV commercials, Paige, 28, was chosen to play Evita in an international search for unknowns. (Rock singer Julie Covington, who did the album, turned down the part.) She hopes to appear in the version that Stigwood and Prince are planning to bring to Broadway in the spring. Stigwood is rumored to be considering Ann-Margret for the part, but don't count Paige out. 'Eva liked to win,' she says, 'and I'm like her on that score.' How about Paige as a rock Turandot?



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