Another production, another hall
Hola! Evita is back in the West End. Hang on, wasn’t it in town relatively recently? Yes, you’re not mistaken. This slick-ish production (co-directed by Bob Tomson and producer Bill Kenwright) was at the Dominion in 2014 and Michael Grandage also put his confident stamp on Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s surprise smash-hit about Eva Peron at the Adelphi in 2006 (later on Broadway).
What’s the rationale for this limited season at the Phoenix? Apparently, it “marks the 65th anniversary” of her death, much commemorated in Argentina in July. Actually, what they should really say is that this revival offers striking parallels with today in terms of South American political turbulence. A case of Don’t Cry for Me Venezuela, perhaps.
Adored by “the people” to the point of beatification, Eva – the right-hand woman of the Juan Perón regime, Argentina’s first lady from 1946 to 1952 – enjoyed a proto-chavista populist personality cult.
Money was thrown in the direction of the poor, but what was the price of that largesse, conducted alongside the repression of the opposition? In the case of the Peronists, a yawning trade deficit and a military coup that she didn’t live to see.
That frisson of topicality is something I clung to watching Emma Hatton gamely tackle a role created in 1978 by Elaine Paige – because there’s so little to latch on to in emotional terms. Hardly Hatton’s doing – it’s an intrinsic issue with the piece. The better numbers – and the good ones (including I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You, Another Suitcase, Another Hall) are terrific – argue the case for the show as a thronging plaza of epic passion.
Yet it’s only when the wily heroine finally succumbs to cancer, that those sweeping strings rouse much deep feeling.
Hatton’s Eva, a smile of self-satisfaction on her lips, is so busy discarding lovers on her way from rural poverty to Buenos Aires (“I wanna be a part of BA,” runs a line you won’t hear at many airports) that she elbows aside much of our sympathy early on. Combine this with some hard-to-fathom lyrics and the prowling, incongruous choric presence of Che (Guevera), Italian hunk Gian Marco Schiaretti oozing cynicism and smugness in equal measure, and the show often looks all dressed up (Hatton earns her fee in costume changes alone) with nowhere dramatically coherent to go.
Such is the general allure of the story and the particular pull of those standout songs, though, that flawed as Evita is, we certainly haven’t seen the last of it.