EVITA MAKES ITS AMERICAN DEBUT
Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Friday, May 11, 1979
By Gardner McKay

Evita, which opened Tuesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, is not the fulfilling show it promises to be. It asks no questions worth answering and proffers no substance, even though it is about a nation's heroine, the queen of the working class-the extremely popular (and, of course, unpopular) Eva Peron, First Lady of the Argentine from 1945 to 1952.

Yet, it is a compelling show. Here's why: casting and staging.

Casting: Patti LuPone as Evita, Bob Gunton as Juan Peron, Mandy Patinkin as Che. They make their parts into something more than they were written to be. And they are cast to type, made to look like the persons they modify.

Staging: Harold Prince uses tricks, tricks, tricks to make you see things you're not really seeing. (Possible?--Yes.) He uses, as they say, every trick in the book.

There's a rumor being bullied about the theatrical world which says that if something has really happened, if a life or an event has been played our before the public, no matter how long ago, if it moved them once, it will move them again. Especially if there was decent media coverage at the time. Terra Nova, The Chicago Conspiracy Trial, Jesus Christ Superstar, each has been pre-tested on the market, each can be staged to involve people's interest one more time, each can carry a show. People don't change. If they cared once, they'll care again.

The Mark Taper Forum commissioned Ted Tally, the author of Terra Nova, to give them a play about the Black Sox (baseball) scandal of 1919. It was the biggest thing ever to hit the sport and there was some doubt as to whether baseball would even get to 1920. One can almost feel the impact onstage, see the strange uniforms, the clippings projected above the actors, the team pictures shown on a screen, the guilty members with circles around their heads. It's theatre. No incident in the 20th century is safe from this sort of coverage. If the Black Sox scandal lends itself to words and music, it'll be a musical and all the better. [Ed. Note: so far, it's only been a movie.]

Eva Peron was a true media baby. Long before there was a Ronald Reagan to beguile voters with Screen Actors Guild magic, there was Evita, a radio personality and small-part movie actress who'd had affairs in low and high places and finally just after she became a blonde, joined Juan Peron's bed the year before he was elected president of Argentina. It was bigger than the Black Sox scandal, and yet she maintained her common touch and became the champion of her lower classes, doling out great stacks of newly minted (and unrecorded) money every day she could. The lower economic class called her Evita, Little Eva, and she was theirs.

When Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborated on their better known Jesus Christ Superstar, they had, of course, a better-known subject. Here with Evita, they revived a 20th-century life, brought it to our attention and said again, 'Hey! She's cute!'

Skin-deep would be an exaggeration for Evita. It doesn't plumb the depths of the finest follicles on the arm. The treatment given her is the same given to Christ. The subjects? Slightly different.

Yet both had certain things in common: Both rose suddenly from modest origins, both enjoyed excellent media relations, both were dichotomic, both died at 33 with charismatic deaths. But whereas Evita acted like Christ, Christ was Christ. And even Harold Prince cannot deify.

For all of this, Patti LuPone is a wondrous Evita, naive and shrewd. Her singing transcends the part that just isn't there. No matter how wonderfully she dances and sings, it is still a cut-out.

With the film clips churning on a large screen overhead, delineating her life, lending importance to what's going on below, the story goes from A to Z. What a convenient friend these film clips have become to playwrights. They tell us everything. Everything that's ever been made public, that is. For newsreel buffs there's plenty of footage, for others there's a constant flow of black and white pictures of Eva doing approximately the same thing: smiling.

Peron is played by Bob Gunton in the most perfect low-key performance imaginable. Wise enough, as Peron must have been, to know who's responsible for things, he stands back and becomes, at times, her consort. When he steps forwards, it is not only with authority, but a look of what we suppose is reality.

Mandy Patinkin sings the role of Che with exquisite voice. Unfortunately, the character of Che is an intrusion on the stage. It is, we can only presume, Che Guevara come in his simple mufti to haunt the proceedings. Che was Argentinian, the son of a successful doctor, but he was a stripling at the time Evita was introducing herself to Juan. Che, always with beard and loose khakis, plays the master of ceremonies, always close with a comment. Che Guevara! Get it? He stands for the deeper revolution Evita was only applying makeup to. Irony galore. It's the sort of historical convolution meant to leave the audience a bit thirsty, full of unanswered questions such as 'Why?' He might have carried a placard which reads I AM A THEATRICAL DEVICE.

Mandy Patinkin could have come out as Chucko the Clown as far as he was concerned. His voice erases any theatre workshop metaphor laid down for him by director or writer.

As for the music, there are only two great songs and that's two more than most musicals have: 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' was first heard here last year on an excellent recording by Olivia Newton-John. It is a stunner and is used more constantly that 'Impossible Dream' was used in Man of La Mancha. This song serves several ways throughout, for joy, sadness and description. It is first played in the incredibly well-staged opening funeral scene when the mourners dance a mournful samba to Che's rendition of Evita's life.

The other song, used only once just after Evita has picked up her star, Juan, at a public function. The song has everything, plot, fancy, explanation, mood-yet it can stand alone as a top hit song. She sings 'I'd be Surprisingly Good for You' in a voice both innocent and commanding. Simple as it is, it is possibly the moment of the evening.

There are other moments of great production beauty, but there's little else behind them, if you're into caring.

Half the time, the lyrics remain one of literal translations, oddly dissonant to the music they are made to join.

The stage has never been so stripped and clean and has never been larger. An armature, quietly similar to the one he invented for New York's great musical Sweeney Todd, has been built by Prince to activate things, but it usually seems to decimate them.

Evita's here from London where it's an established hit, playing at a theatre less than half the size of the Pavilion. The theory here, of course, is that you can only afford a short run and so you get the biggest theatre around and pack it. Only the audience suffers. Let's see, if you can get twice the audience for half the time (it's here for a six-week run), why not get all the audience in the theatre and only hire the orchestra for one night. Next hit show from London could be booked for one Saturday night at the Rose Bowl. After all, the little old Dorothy Chandler Pavilion only has 3,126 seats, only some of them good.



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