Evita, Palladium review: Rachel Zegler isn’t the problem
Evita, Palladium review and star rating: ★★★
Whole PHDs could be written about the publicity campaign for Jamie Lloyd’s Evita. Hundreds of people are gathering outside the Palladium every night to watch Rachel Zegler belt ‘Don’t Cry for me Argentina’ from the theatre balcony for free, a fun PR stunt that is getting so popular it risks being shut down by the police, while the ticketholders, some paying upwards of £245 per seat, have to settle for watching the performance via video link.
And on opening night, Keanu Reeves, Jessica Alba and Pedro Pascal were some of the A-Listers sat metres from me who gave multiple standing ovations in the first act – not at the curtain, but half an hour into the show. It’s common to see British acting titans at opening nights, but this random collection of A-Listers who aren’t necessarily known for theatre showed how far beyond the West End landscape this production has travelled.
How come? It’s from Jamie Lloyd, the zeitgeisty producer behind 2023’s Sunset Boulevard, the man who is basically reinventing what West End shows can look like, so anything he does generates buzz. It also stars Rachel Zegler, who was most famously racially abused for playing Snow White. Lloyd uses live video effects and radical aesthetics (think the lighting and set design from a Wembley Arena pop show) to make the point that theatre can be bigger, louder and more ambitious. But where Sunset Boulevard was more of a gentle character study, Evita is primarily a series of phenomenal ensemble numbers. It feels more like a music concert than a piece of theatrical storytelling.
Evita: Palladium musical offers new thinking about what a musical can look like
As for Zegler, she finds immense depth of character in her leading lady. With the straying of an eye or the tilt of her head, her First Lady of Argentina delivers delicious sass. Evita is the real-life story of the working class Argentinian Eva Perón, who married president Juan Peron, 24 years her senior, in 1945. After seven years of marriage, she died of cervical cancer aged 33. Having established workers’ rights and paid leave for Argentinians, she became an early Champagne socialist; for some, her love for Christian Dior dresses and the finer things in life felt at odds with her stance about equality.
The show runs at three hours but feels half that because it is stuffed with utterly incredible choreography and the litany of musical numbers, including Requiem for Evita, Oh What a Circus and On This Night of a Thousand Stars. Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1975, and debuted in the West End three years later, the tracks still stand up. The choreography is thoroughly modern and looks lifted from a Lady Gaga show.
There are some particularly gorgeous pieces of lighting design by Jon Clark; one bit that sticks in the memory is the illuminated faces of dozens of repressed workers peering through tiers of staging like ghostly apparitions. It’s all stylish misery: balloons are popped to symbolise the deaths of Perón’s detractors (despite their progressive values around workers’ rights, he was inspired by Fascism and had critics sent to detention centres). As for the balcony scene, it’s a triumph: Jamie Lloyd’s live video use risks becoming a tired novelty, but here it’s a clever remark on Eva Perón’s distaste for the upper class and her sympathy for the Argentine working class ‘descamisados’. Zegler’s free nightly live performances have gone viral and hundreds are now showing up to hear the song every evening, but it’s actually not Zegler who’s the main draw here. The amassed crowds standing in the street take on roles within the Evita universe, appearing like hundreds of extras waiting to hear Peron sing (she was a professional singer and entertainer before she became embroiled with politics). There are audible gasps when the camera pans past Zegler to reveal the hundreds gathered below.
And yet, I wasn’t alone in finding Evita hard work. The outdated script introduces a range of characters without really putting them into context, or explaining their roles properly. Rather than location-specific sets most scenes are played on a sparse stage bathed in white lighting. There’s barely any spoken lines – everything is delivered in verse as a rock opera – making the show incredibly hard to follow for people who don’t know the story well. It’s endless energy and high-octane choreo with very little time to actually sit with the characters and their feelings.
By the interval, other journalists admitted to me they were finding the show hard to follow. Another audience member overheard our conversation and came over to tell us she was relieved to know she wasn’t the only one who had no idea what was going on.
It doesn’t help that the production’s music overpowers the lyrics. Rachel Zegler’s diction in particular becomes difficult to understand when she sings, and it’s the same for the ensemble numbers: too often it’s really difficult to catch what they’re saying.
It raises whole questions about accessibility, and the amount of knowledge audiences should come into shows with. Some critics will say cult musicals are designed for die-hard fans, but I think productions should be able to be understood by newcomers. While Jamie Lloyd’s Evita offers plenty of fresh thinking on the scope of the production values that are possible in these cranky, hundred-year-old theatres, and the balcony scene is a triumph, I can’t help but feel disappointed that so much of it went over my head.
Evita plays at the London Palladium until 6 September