Evita review

What surrounds this central pair is staggering. The ensemble is at once a faultlessly drilled machine and a collection of vividly realised individuals, and Fabian Aloise’s choreography is insanely exciting – sexy, sweaty, muscular and acrobatic.

There’s superheated tango for the song of seduction I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You; there’s deliberately unlovely crotch-grabbing and twerking; the number Buenos Aires is a heart-stopping explosion of limbs, leaps and writhing bodies; there are demos and rallies that feel so genuinely dangerous that they seem on the verge of tipping over into violence or riot. The Art of the Possible – a number of ruthless manoeuvring among Argentine’s political hopefuls – becomes a stunning dance solo in which a single female soldier (Mireia Mambo) slides, stamps, stabs and marches, every jagged and precise movement a threat, until she bursts a confetti-filled balloon, the gunshot sound symbolic of an opponent brutally eliminated.

The moment for which Rice and Lloyd Webber’s show is most remembered, of course, is the Casa Rosada balcony scene, in which a freshly victorious Eva addresses the crowds in Don’t Cry for Me Argentina. Lloyd takes a characteristically fresh approach to it that gives it a newly whetted, cynical and satirical edge.

Through adroit use of live video, so intelligently employed before in Sunset Boulevard, we watch as Zegler dons the platinum wig, diamonds and white strapless gown of a thousand archive press images of Eva. She delivers the song from one of the Palladium’s exterior balconies, to ardent fans who queue in the street for hours beforehand. As the camera pans over the eager onlookers – many of them also filming on their phones – and zeroes in on her face, tears stream down Zegler’s cheeks.

But in the next breath she’s sneaking a crafty glance at the lens to check it’s following her, her savvy image-building exposed. And afterwards, she retires to her dressing room where she strips away her First Lady regalia. It’s a terrific interplay between ideas of theatricality, celebrity and the pantomime of populist politics.

It’s a blisteringly modern take on the show

You might, perhaps, argue that anyone coming to the show with no clue of the historical context will need an attentive ear to follow the details of the sung-through plot. But there’s no doubt that, alongside its exhilarating song and dance, Lloyd’s production also serves dramatic meat. There’s a lifetime of pain and despair in Bella Brown’s delivery of the lovely, aching ballad Another Suitcase in Another Hall as the discarded young mistress of James Olivas’ smooth Peron. And Zegler and Olivas show us the evolution of the Perons’ relationship from opportunistic symbiosis to, if not love, then at least a connection of mutual regard and respect, each of them in their way an expert political operator. 

It’s a blisteringly modern take on the show – a production that’s articulately in dialogue with our 21st-century world of image manipulation, interchangeable identity, dubious iconography and deep division. And above all, it’s an absolute blast. Unmissable.

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