{"id":31411,"date":"2025-07-02T02:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T02:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31411\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T02:17:08","slug":"rachel-zegler-stars-in-jamie-lloyds-west-end-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31411\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Zegler Stars in Jamie Lloyd’s West End Musical"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe crowd roars and the vast, unsmiling curtain-call cast line the stage with the leading man bare-chested and covered in blood. No, this isn\u2019t director Jamie Lloyd<\/a>\u2019s \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s his \u201cEvita<\/a>\u201d. And that\u2019s not all that these two productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber<\/a> musicals share. With weapons-grade lighting and sound, this pulsating West End production is almost \u201cEvita \u2013 The Rock Concert.\u201d But while it delivers in spades for the sensation-generation, something major is missing. That something is storytelling. Newcomers, likely to be baffled, need to read a synopsis beforehand since detailed characterization and plot are wholly sacrificed to spectacle.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey must have excitement,\u201d sings Rachel Zegler<\/a>\u2019s Eva Peron. That\u2019s this show\u2019s defining quality. Out go Hal Prince\u2019s original, legendary black-box production, and Michael Grandage\u2019s more Argentina-authentic revival (on which Lloyd was assistant director). The production it most resembles is the one Lloyd himself directed in 2019 at Regent\u2019s Park Open Air Theatre with the same design team, choreographer and set: a plain gray, stage-wide staircase of six risers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s extremely good for stark presentation \u2014 the serried rows of hard-working, gesticulating dancers can always be seen \u2014 but it also flattens out the drama. Because almost everything happens in so characterless a space, individual scenes have no sense of location or atmosphere. Games of hierarchy based on how high up they are on the stairs are being played, but they barely register since the story is so illegible.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the show opened, the internet was awash with videos and much-clicked-on stories about \u201cartistic differences\u201d between the director and his leading lady. You\u2019d never know it from Zegler\u2019s astonishingly assured, excitingly committed vocal performance. Her sound is carefully, thrillingly produced. Her money notes catapult the crowd and she\u2019s never less than exhilarating right though her wide\u00a0vocal\u00a0range.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, with the first preview, came the reveal of Lloyd\u2019s latest piece of video work, a move that made it an item on BBC primetime news and in the New York Times. Borrowing Ivo Van Hove\u2019s use of a character going outside the theatre on camera before being filmed returning to the action in his National Theatre\/Broadway staging of the movie \u201cNetwork,\u201d Lloyd famously made the inside\/outside live filming central to his \u201cSunset Boulevard.\u201d He then filmed Tom Holland on the roof during his production of \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d and now he places Zegler\u2019s Eva on an actual balcony mimicking Peron\u2019s Casa Rosada that sits handily above the London Palladium entrance.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is absolutely an intellectual case to be made for showing Eva addressing a real crowd as around six hundred or so members of the public nightly gather outside the theatre for free to look up and watch her sing \u201cDon\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina.\u201d In the theater, meanwhile, up to 2,286 audience members watch the live, multi-camera filming of her and the crowd on a letterbox screen the width of the notoriously wide stage.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince we see her in immense close-up in the famous wig and costume, we\u2019re not precisely robbed of seeing the star perform the show\u2019s greatest hit (and later we do witness her sing the less powerful reprise). But unlike the recent \u201cThe Picture of Dorian Gray,\u201d in which the multiple camera\/video games were a brilliant elucidation of novel wholly dedicated to image, here it seems like mere display. Theater works on a human level connecting performer and audience. Seeing the show\u2019s literally iconic moment on video leaves us admiring of Zegler but emotionally disconnected. All we feel is Eva\u2019s \u2014 and Lloyd\u2019s \u2014 manipulation.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore problematically, it\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve seen another side to Zegler\u2019s Eva. Until this point she has been directed to present her character, posing in black bra and shorts throughout the first act, solely as a woman exuding sex with a non-stop sneer. Nothing develops or changes. Looking at the\u00a0audience, she presents monotonously as being\u00a0entirely knowing \u2014 but what she knows remains a mystery because all nuance is banished.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s true throughout. Even one of the score\u2019s tenderest moments, in which Juan Peron\u2019s mistress sings \u201cAnother Suitcase in Another Hall,\u201d falls victim to the demand for constant high voltage. Because actor Bella Brown has been directed to become resentful, the last section of her song is robbed of pathos.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor all that the show belongs to Eva, she needs strong supporting men. Diego Andres Rodriguez prowls about, suitably sly and snarling as Che, the narrator, but he cannot have a relationship with a cipher. He ultimately strips down to briefs (black, natch) so that two men can murder him by pouring buckets of blue, white and red paint over his gleaming body \u2014 the colours of Peron\u2019s political party and the aforementioned blood. He fares better than James Olivas (as Peron himself), whose carefully displayed musculature cannot make up for a lack of gravitas. His song with the generals, \u201cThe Art of the Possible,\u201d is imaginatively staged but in story terms is indecipherable.<\/p>\n

\n\tFull marks to Lloyd\u2019s team for constantly whipping up audience excitement by maintaining resplendent aggression throughout. But in Rice and Lloyd Webber\u2019s most ambitious show \u2014 which charts not just rise of a complex (anti)heroine but populism curdling into fascism \u2014 it\u2019s hard not to feel that their material is being short-changed.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot that many will care since choreographer Fabian Aloise\u2019s dancers are near-ceaselessly striking poses, stomping and displaying attitude in unison across the steps. But for all their startling power and sweat, the heavily gestural choreography is presentational rather than dramatic. You admire the dancing, not the dance.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet even they are not the busiest people on the show. Step forward deputy stage manager Jo Dunne calling the literally hundreds \u2014 possibly thousands \u2014 of cues demanded by Jon Clark\u2019s incandescent, show-defining lighting.<\/p>\n

\n\tA deserving Tony-winner for \u201cStranger Things,\u201d Clark starts with acidic side-light cutting through more smoke than a burning building. That gives way to scalding down-lighting, dazzling banks of brightness and pulse-quickening chases, thrillingly meshed to the score played by Alan Williams\u2019 razor-sharp, roof-raising, 18-piece band via Adam Fisher\u2019s sound design (which is less good on detailing the lyrics). The buttons Clark slams on numbers leave other shows reeling.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is, undoubtedly, a technically flawless achievement. And no one will complain about not knowing where their ticket price cash has been spent. But dazzling though it is, there\u2019s something faintly decadent about abandoning the depth of Rice and Lloyd Webber\u2019s strongest achievement for a thrill-ride display.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The crowd roars and the vast, unsmiling curtain-call cast line the stage with the leading man bare-chested and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[26554,171,319,26555,321,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-31411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-andrew-lloyd-webber","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-evita","11":"tag-jamie-lloyd","12":"tag-rachel-zegler","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114781241019017374","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}