{"id":233061,"date":"2025-07-02T22:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T22:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233061\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T22:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T22:02:11","slug":"rachel-zegler-leads-london-jamie-lloyd-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233061\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Zegler Leads London Jamie Lloyd Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCould it be time for Jamie Lloyd<\/a> to hit the pause button? The prolific director, whose radically reimagined Sunset Blvd.<\/a> last month won Tony Awards<\/a> for best musical revival and lead actress Nicole Scherzinger, is rolling out productions at such a rate that his template \u2014 big stars, event theater<\/a>, a style that might be described as minimalist swagger \u2014 is beginning to look entrenched, and a bit hit-or-miss.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpectacle worked wonders with his recent, disco-dancing Much Ado About Nothing starring Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell. But while there was a glorious opportunity for a revisionist take on Evita<\/a> \u2014 to reconfigure the Andrew Lloyd Webber<\/a>\u2013Tim Rice<\/a> mega-musical from the 1970s for a more politically confused and troubled age \u2014 Lloyd has simply turned up the volume.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe result feels decidedly erratic. The central performance from Rachel Zegler<\/a> at times gives you goosebumps, but at others is in desperate need of direction; showstoppers bring usually reserved London audiences to their feet (mostly unheard of here, though it happened too during Much Ado); directorial choices damage whatever narrative interest the work might have. It\u2019s entertaining and galling in equal measure.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs ever, the immediate set is minimal: bare, except for tiered steps that run the length of the stage and a giant sign, EVITA, across the back (in what does feel like a contemporary spin, Eva Per\u00f3n is presented here more as a brand than an icon). Other than that, the staging will be accompanied by carefully selected props: the live camera that has become ubiquitous in Lloyd\u2019s productions, a shower of blue and white confetti, blood and paint.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show opens as a tease, the song \u201cRequiem for Evita\u201d sung almost as a Gregorian chant, by cowled figures gliding through dry ice. But any thought that this might be a pared-back evening are immediately cast aside as the curtain rises to reveal the Evita sign and a strutting Zegler, oozing feline sexiness in leather bra and hot pants. At the same time, Che (Diego Andres Rodriguez), an ambiguous character from Eva\u2019s own poor background, begins his protracted debunking of the Per\u00f3n legend with \u201cOh What a Circus.\u201d And the musical\u2019s real face blasts into action.<\/p>\n

\n\tThroughout this number, and for some time after, Zegler endures her most difficult phase of the revival: physically commanding the stage (as she does the entire evening) but with a single, fixed expression, something akin to a teenager\u2019s attempt to appear superior, that suggests there\u2019s next to nothing going on behind the pose.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt quickly becomes apparent, too, that the evening is going to be dominated by over-miked excess \u2014 the volume way too loud, the songs pitched too shrilly. Not only can this lead, at times, to a self-defeating sensory overload, but it exacerbates the issue often raised by sung-through musicals, of plot and character simply getting lost in the mix.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile \u201cBuenos Aires\u201d is one of the big-belt numbers \u2014 accompanied by thrilling choreography involving the whole cast \u2014 that bring down the house, many of the production\u2019s most satisfying moments involve a rare dialing down and focus. One is \u201cAnother Suitcase in Another Hall,\u201d poignantly sung by Bella Brown as the discarded mistress of Juan Per\u00f3n (James Olivas), in a welcome change of tempo and temperature. Another, and not surprisingly the show\u2019s high point, is when Zegler puts her stamp on \u201cDon\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was mild controversy when it was discovered in previews that Zegler would perform the show\u2019s signature song not in the auditorium, but on the Palladium\u2019s exterior balcony for the benefit of passers-by gathered in the street \u2014 who, horror of horrors, have not paid handsomely for a ticket.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs it turns out, this is Lloyd\u2019s greatest stroke of inspiration (similar to what he did with Tom Francis\u2019 Joe Gillis for the title song in Sunset Blvd. or Jessica Chastain\u2019s Nora at the end of A Doll\u2019s House<\/a>). The theater audience does see the actress of course, captured on a giant, wide screen as she moves through the ornate Edwardian building. Her vampish garb replaced by a First Lady\u2019s majestic white dress, bejeweled, her dark hair now white, she sings from the balcony, the camera dissolving between her cinematic close-ups and the rapt crowd. Zegler crushes the song, eking out of it every ounce of emotion, real and contrived.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe number is brilliantly conceived and executed, a genuine goosebump moment. But with the Palladium neatly filling in for Buenos Aires\u2019 Casa Rosada, it also tellingly offers what Lloyd\u2019s minimalist abstraction has hitherto denied: a sense of context and color.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile there was a glimpse of Eva\u2019s feistiness and strength in the first half, Zegler as a performer is now fully unleashed. Set free from the limitations of lyricist Rice\u2019s crass social climber, the actress finds much more expression and emotion in the second half, as Eva navigates ambition, public perception and illness. Zegler\u2019s rendition of the dying Eva\u2019s \u201cYou Must Love Me,\u201d the song added for Alan Parker\u2019s 1996 film with Madonna, is extremely moving.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a pity that the men can\u2019t really match her. Though he delivers the songs competently, Rodriguez (Sunset Blvd.) suffers in the way of all Ches. The character\u2019s high and mighty put-downs wear thin as the show progresses, and any political objections he may have to the Per\u00f3ns are undermined by smug preening.<\/p>\n

\n\tLloyd\u2019s casting of Olivas as Per\u00f3n \u2014 in reality 23 years Eva\u2019s senior and invariably played by an older actor \u2014 seems perplexing. Why have a young man who looks exactly the same as the monolithic blockheads who are Per\u00f3n\u2019s followers and henchmen? Why circumvent an inescapable age dynamic in the relationship? It doesn\u2019t help that Olivas is rather bland in the role.<\/p>\n

\n\tLloyd\u2019s early reputation was partly built on an imaginative knack for tapping new meaning from the darkest and most interesting recesses of a play, notably but not only Harold Pinter\u2019s work (Lloyd\u2019s Betrayal<\/a>, also with Hiddleston, was lauded on both sides of the Atlantic). <\/p>\n

\n\tEvita isn\u2019t the same kind of animal, but there\u2019s juice in the albeit contestable nature of Per\u00f3n\u2019s political leanings. That could have resonated at a time of ever-growing right-wing populism, but is not capitalized upon here. It seems typical of the production that one brutally telling moment, Che\u2019s face and body suddenly becoming bloodied during a Peronist march, is easily lost with the actor stranded downstage as confetti distractingly showers the audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven that the director has cast Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in his upcoming Broadway production of Waiting for Godot, there may well be an electric guitar in the mix. Nonetheless, let\u2019s pray he doesn\u2019t drown out the Beckett play\u2019s marvelous silence.<\/p>\n

\n\tVenue: The London Palladium, London
Cast:\u00a0Rachel Zegler,\u00a0Diego Andres Rodriguez,\u00a0James Olivas,\u00a0Aaron Lee Lambert,\u00a0Bella Brown
Lyrics: Tim Rice
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Set and costume designer:\u00a0Soutra Gilmour\u00a0
Lighting designer: Jon Clark
Sound designer: Adam Fisher
Music supervisor and musical director: Alan Williams
Choreographer:\u00a0Fabian Aloise
Presented by\u00a0Lloyd Webber Harrison Musicals and The Jamie Lloyd Company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could it be time for Jamie Lloyd to hit the pause button? The prolific director, whose radically reimagined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[80187,748,393,80185,4884,80840,257,91370,80186,32519,91371,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-233061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-andrew-lloyd-webber","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-evita","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-jamie-lloyd","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-london-theater","16":"tag-rachel-zegler","17":"tag-theater","18":"tag-tim-rice","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114785901355228436","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233061","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=233061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}