La revolución de Lloyd! An Evita for Our Time

The curtain has risen, and I’ve already lost my breath. The opening scene of auteur director Jamie Lloyd’s production of Evita at the London Palladium billows with smoke and passion. Hooded mourners, a disgruntled Che (Diego Andres Rodriguez), stone steps lined with floodlights, and a life-size neon EVITA sign set up the inspiration behind this radical reimagining. Think: a Charli XCX concert during a Trump rally – and all of it within Lloyd’s now-signature hyper-minimalist style. Eva (Rachel Zegler) wears bralettes instead of floral dresses. Juan Perón’s (James Olivas) GOU officers are all sleeveless. Talk about ‘the shirtless ones’. None of Harold Prince’s original Brecht-like, historical design elements can be found here. Don’t be mistaken that there is nothing but the actors on stage. Direction is concentrated on the core elements of the show: wealth and poverty, revolution and counter-revolution, sincerity and cynicism. It is deconstructing at its best, allowing the audience to hyper-focus on the music, lyrics, plot, and the sheer acting triumphs that are happening on stage. One such example can be seen in ‘The Art of the Possible’, where dance expresses the knife’s edge that the country is on, the military deposing one regime after another, all shown through finger guns popping confetti-filled balloons.

Everything before builds up to this moment, and everything after tears this exquisite performance apart

One moment centres the whole production. Coming as no surprise at all to anybody who’s been around TikTok’s theatre corners, ‘Don’t Cry for me Argentina’ is performed on the grand balcony of the Palladium (adorned with gold crests bearing ‘P’ for Perón emblems) while streamed to the audience on an encompassing screen, Juan and Che gazing up in glory. As if coming straight out of any local drama group’s production, Zegler is dressed in the classic white dress, blonde wig and crystal jewellery. Everything before builds up to this moment, and everything after tears this exquisite performance apart. Rather than just a soapy ballad, the classic number is turned into perfect propaganda. High angles, crane shots and footage of the actual impromptu crowd of fans down below all make this classic number feel like a viral political moment you’d watch on your FYP.  Zegler delivers a precise and piercing rendition of the number, indicative of her overall performance. Some have slandered this hi-tech choice. I say that it is the most thrilling musical theatre moment I’ve ever witnessed. The colossal theatre, packing a full house, is astonished. A few laughs, myself included, came when the camera cross-dissolves onto the real awed crowd outside. I simply could not believe it.

After this stellar innovation, Lloyd can be comfortably put with Granville-Barker, Brook and Eyre as one of the great West End directors. It’s the best part of the show. Lloyd (who was sitting two rows in front of me, the night I saw it) certainly knows this. The rest of Act Two is spent deconstructing this carefully composed visage. In Act One, she decries the middle classes, shouting that she’ll never accept them. By Act Two, she orders her stylists to “Christian Dior me, from my head to my toes”. Blaming oligarchs seems ridiculous once Eva is on her rainbow tour of Europe, and refuses to stay anywhere other than Buckingham Palace. Zegler controls this character of swirling moods very well. At her core, Eva is somebody completely out of her depth, yet she still decides to walk on air against her better judgement.

Showbusiness is Eva’s fervent ideology, now transformed into a pop girl bravado. A rural-to-urban migrant, her initial glamour stardom twists into a cult of personality

Showbusiness is Eva’s fervent ideology, now transformed into a pop girl bravado. A rural-to-urban migrant, her initial glamour stardom twists into a cult of personality. Switching from the bundling troubadour Magaldi (Aaron Lee Lambert) to the imposing colonel Perón, she becomes tyrannical and delusional. Perón’s hollow nationalism rhymes with Eva’s hollow ambition. She stridently scales the class ladder, gaining nothing when she gets to the top. She is part Cinderella, part Macbeth mixed in with Lloyd Webber’s eclectic sound. Rice’s lyrics (“Instead of government we had a stage!”) ring true now as they did in 1978. The rousing Act One finale ‘A new Argentina’ ends in a sea of flags, confetti, and streamers – truly nationalist furore that you can easily find at a Reform UK rally. And yet Che, the everyman narrator, lies beaten by Perón’s secret police, representing the countless victims of a fascist dictatorship hiding behind its glamorous First Lady. Rodriguez’s performance deserves praise, effectively narrating the entire show with his impressive vocals. His finest moment: Che is bloodied and doused in blue and yellow paint as he stares into the audience. Other productions may look over the repression of Perón’s regime. Lloyd shows the dead staring back.

The musical presents a fascinating political history, something that seems ever more relevant in today’s populist world

Evita is not just a dazzling rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall story. The musical presents a fascinating political history, something that seems ever more relevant in today’s populist world. Warning the audience to be wary of leaders who are too entertaining, who seem all about gaining goodies and power rather than changing the material conditions in society. The Peróns betray their own revolution, starting to rule like the aristocracy that they pushed out: supported by the trade unions, only to suppress them when in power.  Eva is the queen of the working people’s hearts, who shoots up in a rainbow high that explodes into state violence and economic free fall. This production visualises a suppressed and manipulated proletariat, a wild and turbulent military, an ignorant and indifferent bourgeoisie – the broken society that such empty politics can create.

In a speech from 1948, Perón remarked about his namesake ideology: “One feels it or else disagrees.” The same can be said about Jamie Lloyd’s Evita, pulverising intense image, sound and emotion that makes an audience, in enjoyment or confusion, incapable of dozing off.