Evita Manipulates Her Way to Immortality

THEATER

Evita

music by Andrew Lioys Webber

lyrics by Tim Rice

directed by Harold Prince

at the Colonial Theatre

through October 18

The scene: A cinema in Buenos Aires, July 26, 1952. A group of theater-goers are watching a movie. The movie stops and the lights come up to the chagrin of the audience. We hear a voice over the intercom speaking in Spanish, which is soon drowned out by the monotonic English translation of the day's latest news: "To inform the people of Argentina that Eva Peron, spiritual leader of the nation, entered immortality at 20:25 hours today."

A bit cliched, but so begins the Colonial Theatre's version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's famed Evita. Webber's solo efforts include mega-hits Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Evita, on the other hand, was written 16 years ago with the help of lyricist Tim Rice, whose previous collaborations with Webber include Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

The true-life rags-to-riches story of Argentinian heroine Evita Peron is well-known. Evita traces this shooting star from the slums of Buenos Aires to the president's mansion. Evita grew up an ambitious girl in Argentinian slums, carefully manipulating her "targets," usually men, to ensure her ascent on the ladder of success. Her climb ends when she finally reaches the "top" and marries Juan Peron, the soon-to-be-dictator of Argentina.

Evita's climb in social status has its costs, though: The innocence and ambition of her youth slowly turns into a vengeful bitterness against those she has struggled so long to become part of--the upper class. We also see her personal ambitions supersede those for her country as she sacrifices the poor in order to live in wealth.

Even when Evita does come to the aid of the lower class, she skims a percentage of the funds for deposit in her Swiss bank account.

The play shows every side of Evita, the innocence, her fame and her infamy. The faltering direction of Evita's life becomes intimately tied to the decline of an Argentina blinded by idolworship of this actress/politician, a scenario frighteningly similar to America's love affair with Ronald Reagan.

The music: Of course, "Don't Cry for me Argentina" is good, even great. Everyone knows the Iyrics--enough. But the rest of the score? It's relatively weak, with only one other song, "High Flying, Adored," escaping the jaded confines of the musical and reaching into the otherworldly.

Evita also seems to fall short of the usual number of original and memorable melodies we expect from Webber and Rice. All of the melodies are repeated at least once, some as many as three times. Webber relies too heavily on "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," which opens both acts and also closes the show.

Despite the repetitiveness, Rice and Webber's vast creativity and active imaginations come to the forefront in this musical. The choreography of the song "The Art of the Possible" is impressive, beginning slowly with five military officers sitting in rocking chairs, singing. They then stand up, remove a chair and proceed to play musical chair. The point of the game: The man left standing is forced to leave the room, and thus symbolically relinquishes power over Argentina. The remaining men sit and the tempo of the song increases slightly. This charade continues until Juan Peron is the only one left and becomes the leader.

Webber plucks the emotional string of the audience throughout his musical. The audience mourns Evita's death by way of the nauseatingly high-pitched chorus of "Requiem Evita" (which sounds amazingly like Webber's own Requiem). We empathize with Evita's triumphs as she passes through the turbulent trials of her life. In a strange sense, we even admire Evita's fortitude despite our disgust at her betrayals of Argentina. This duality of feeling toward Evita is precisely what Webber wants us to experience.