\u2018There\u2019s so much history and energy held in there [the Palladium],\u2019 says Soutra Gilmour, Evita\u2019s set and costume designer (pictured)<\/p>\n
Johan Persson<\/p>\n
July. It\u2019s the day following Evita\u2019s Opening Night and The London Palladium reception brims with flowers. \u2018This is nothing on what was there yesterday,\u2019 the receptionist says. If it wasn\u2019t already, owing to the headline-grabbing, audience-drawing balcony scene \u2013 when Eva Per\u00f3n (played by 24-year-old Rachel Zegler), fully transformed into Evita, blonde-wigged and Christian Dior-dressed, sings \u2018Don\u2019t Cry for me Argentina\u2019 before the thronging masses on Argyll Street \u2013 it is now very much the talk of the town. The morning\u2019s papers beamed: \u2018Viva Evita! Viva Zegler!\u2019 and \u2018Believe the hype. This is one for the history books\u2019. Lord Lloyd Webber, Pedro Pascal and Ben Whishaw descended for press night,\u00a0not to mention Keanu Reeves, Nita Ambani and Hayley Atwell. Three unprompted standing ovations broke out mid-performance, the audience, apparently unable to contain their adulation\u00a0\u2013\u00a0but this was more than just a theatrical love-in.<\/p>\n
\u2018There\u2019s so much history and energy held in there [the Palladium],\u2019 says Soutra Gilmour, Evita\u2019s set and costume designer and theatre director Jamie Lloyd\u2019s 20-year-long creative partner-in-excellence. \u2018When it\u2019s electric, it really goes,\u2019 she emphasises, sat in a sparsely-decorated, wood-panelled room right at the very heart of the 114-year-old theatre, at the end of a maze of corridors and doors that seamlessly move between the front and back of house. \u2018It\u2019s a 2000-seater but it\u2019s got an intimacy\u2026 how do you create that? It\u2019s something that holds the energy,\u2019 says Gilmour, speaking a mile a minute, dressed in a blue Adidas striped top which goes with her same-colour, same-brand shoes and blue-rimmed spectacles. Gilmour, who celebrated opening night at the Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue \u2013\u00a0\u2018it was absolutely boiling\u2019 \u2013 is already on to the next project: Samuel Becket\u2019s Waiting for Godot which will open on Broadway in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018There\u2019s so much history and energy held in there [the Palladium],\u2019 says Soutra Gilmour, Evita\u2019s set and costume…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,126,4884,257,22392,16,15,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-313819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-textaboveleftsmall","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114963382561943902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313819","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=313819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}