{"id":230516,"date":"2025-07-01T23:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T23:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230516\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T23:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T23:21:11","slug":"evita-starring-rachel-zegler-at-the-london-palladium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230516\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Evita\u2019 Starring Rachel Zegler at the London Palladium"},"content":{"rendered":"

In terms of pure column inches, the balcony scene from Jamie Lloyd\u2019s <\/a>Evita<\/a> is surely the biggest news to come out of the theatre world in years. Hacks the planet over have been entranced by the potent cocktail of star Rachel Zegler\u2019s fame and the sheer ballsiness of Lloyd having her sing \u2018Don\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina\u2019 for free to the good people of Argyll Street at 9pm each night from the London Palladium balcony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There has also been a fantastic amount of bollocks written about the sequence, both by journalists and on social media. First, a tranche of articles suggesting ticket holders were furious that Zegler wasn\u2019t singing the song to them in the theatre. Second, well-meaning social media types decreeing Lloyd had intended it as some sort of earnest way to big up Argentine First Lady Eva Per\u00f3n\u2019s woman-of-the-people status.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second party was not entirely wrong, but the scene \u2013 which is, to be clear, astonishingly good \u2013\u00a0can only really be contextually appreciated if you\u2019ve seen the one before it, which very much takes place in the theatre. The first half of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice\u2019s classic musical ends to the disorientating, super-amplified strains of \u2018A New Argentina\u2019. In it, Ziegler\u2019s Eva \u2013 a malevolent brunette hood rat in skimpy black leather with a howling, heavy metal delivery \u2013 eggs on her fascist beefcake husband Juan Per\u00f3n (James Olivas) to take the Argentine presidency by any means necessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It feels remarkable that the fast-rising Hollywood star has deigned to spend four months doing an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for a crowd of Brits<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Opening the second half, the balcony sequence\u00a0is a study in pure artifice. Clad in flowing white dress and an elegant blonde wig, Evita \u2013 now the First Lady \u2013\u00a0faces the Argyll Street public with a beatific expression on her face, singing her great song of love and yearning for the country she\u2019s cynically worked her way to the summit of. The crowd are both Zegler\u2019s adoring public and in a brilliantly cynical stroke, they\u2019re also Evita\u2019s: the chance to see a star sing her song has essentially led to the public volunteering to serve as extras in the propaganda broadcast that we in the theatre are shown on a big screen. But the Eva the outside audience sees is a lie: wig, dress and her sense of empathy are torn off before she returns to the stage. It\u2019s a pitch-perfect mix of theatrical audacity, political satire and deft cinematography. It strikes me as remarkable that anyone watching inside could possibly feel short changed, especially as the song is reprised several times \u2013 I suspect the negative headlines were based on troll posts or people so incurious about theatre that maybe they shouldn\u2019t have bothered.<\/p>\n

\"Evita,
\nPhoto: Marc BrennerRachel Zegler (Eva Pero\u0301n) and Diego Andres Rodriguez (Che) <\/p>\n

There are a lot of things to be excited about. The balcony stream stuns. Fabian Aloise\u2019s choreography is phenomenal: playful, jerky and contorted, like sexy demonic possession. And my god, Zegler: even in an expensive production in a huge famous theatre, it feels remarkable that the fast-rising 24-year-old Hollywood star has deigned to spend four months doing an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for a crowd of whey-faced Brits. Strikingly angular \u2013\u00a0her face shapeshifts under Jon Clark\u2019s lights \u2013 Zegler\u2019s performance is brilliant and unsentimental. Rice\u2019s lyrics always acknowledged the fact that Eva\u2019s rise was shady, but most productions \u2013\u00a0including Lloyd\u2019s 2019 Open Air Theatre version, which this is adapted from \u2013\u00a0tend to take a relatively indulgent, \u2018yes she did these things but wow she pulled herself up from nothing\u2019 view. Zegler\u2019s Evita is simply not a nice person: a ruthless climber who leaves a string of ruined lives in her path and who serves as something of a Lady Macbeth figure to her authoritarian husband. The populist\u00a0Per\u00f3ns were on the softer end of actual fascism, but it\u2019s to the credit of Lloyd and Zegler how unsparing this production is with them. Her range is also genuinely jaw-dropping: she\u2019s a showtunes gal and you expect the mannered beauty of \u2018Don\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina\u2019, but it\u2019s the leather-lunged rock stuff that\u2019s the real revelation.<\/p>\n

Okay then! Wham, bam, show of the year, right? Well, not quite. Evita began life in 1976 as an album, and was only staged as a musical two years later. It is therefore sung through with no linking dialogue and a somewhat vibes-based approach to narrative that can often leap about confusingly. Most productions go out of their way to contextualise the songs via period sets and costumes. But Lloyd has no truck with that: with the cast dressed like they\u2019re off to some intimidatingly modern afterparty, each song is treated like a mini music video, staged on Soutra Gilmour\u2019s sleekly abstract black steps set. There are some wonderful ideas within this – and some heart-stoppingly brilliant bits where the colour blue suddenly explodes into the typical monochrome Lloyd\/Gilmore palette – but none of it really helps you understand what\u2019s going on exactly, and you\u2019re pretty much entirely at the mercy of Rice\u2019s lyrics for context\u2026 which can be tough. They\u2019re good song lyrics, but a bit hazy as a guide to the ins and outs of mid-twentieth century Argentinian politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Lloyd\u2019s 2019 version the character of Che \u2013 a sort of avatar of the \u2018true\u2019 working classes \u2013\u00a0felt well integrated into the show, a knowing conspirator to a less serious Evita. Here, Diego Andres Rodriguez\u2019s rugged Che assumes more of a Jiminy Cricket role, the conscience to Zegler\u2019s heartless and unappreciative Eva. But their distant and uneasy relationship makes Che\u2019s part more confusing than usual, although the dark final twist to their relationship still pays off.<\/p>\n

Coherence isn\u2019t this Evita\u2019s strong suit. But there is so much that is good about it \u2013\u00a0from Zegler, to the choreography, to the timely antifascist sentiment, to That Scene \u2013\u00a0that I can look past a few negatives. It\u2019s not just the London theatre event of the summer, but the London event of the summer full stop.<\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

London Palladium. Now\u00a0until\u00a0Sep 6. Buy tickets\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025.
<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s Globe has announced its 2025 winter season.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In terms of pure column inches, the balcony scene from Jamie Lloyd\u2019s Evita is surely the biggest news…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,10661,393,4884,257,10662,2764,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-230516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-categories-theatre","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-news-theatre-performance","14":"tag-theatre","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114780549229737158","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}