West End Review: Evita (2007)

Last week was Maz's and my 8-month anniversary (ah, kid, how they celebrate the little things -- and we're proud to, too), so as a treat, we decided to go out for a show and dinner. We picked Evita, which is supposed to currently be the best show in the West End, has gotten rave reviews, and has fulfilled every expectation it had drawn to itself being the first UK production of the classic in, apparently, nearly 30 years.

Now some of you might be wondering why I'd include something like this in a blog that's supposed to be about my, and our, working our way in the film business, trying to make movies, and trying to learn a few things along the way. Well, I happen to think every art form can be enlightening to another -- musical theater relating to film especially. Musicals have a certain sense of rhythm, and pace, and structure, and bring their emotions about in very interesting ways -- ways that, if thought and used the right way, could be, I think, used in a movie, and successfully so. Evita particulary so, since it's an extremely operatic piece, and the music is really, at the core, how it tells the story (there's no speaking at all in the show).

I have also personally been a long time fan of musicals (go ahead, go ahead -- bring on the gay jokes), which I think are a tremendous achievement -- you need to match lyrics to music to orchestration to staging to set and costume design to performance to lighting to a million othe things...And when done right, I think a musical is a unique, terrific form of escapism, that only film, in any way, shape or form, can equal. My father is a huge Andrew Lloyd Webber fan, as is Mare's, and I grew up seeing musicals here and there -- the first one I can consciously remember being Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which we saw in London. I was tiny, I was restless, and I thought a musical was a horrible idea -- dress up and sit in a dark room for 2 hours, watching over-emotional people sing and dance? No thank you. But my parents, bless their hearts, made us go, and I remember having the best time of my life -- even slipping out of my seat to sit on the steps in the aisle to have a better view. I was caught, hook, line, sinker, and fisherman. We bought the soundtrack CD that night, and I remember learning it by heart, and have been thrilled by musicals since. I've seen a couple in the West End since (Starlight Express, Guys & Dolls, The Phantom Of The Opera, Les Miserables a long time ago), and Cats in New York with my family, and when I finally moved to New York in 2005, I made sure to see as many as I could. Over the next 18 months period, I saw, off the top of my head, Mamma Mia!, Tarzan, Sweet Charity, The Producers, The Lion King, The Beauty & The Beast, Wicked, Chicago, Avenue Q, Monty Python's Spamalot, Rent, The Woman In White and within weeks of being back in the UK, Mare and I had also gone to see We Will Rock You. It's a thrill, to me -- only with movies am I disappointed so much by a bad show and inspired and carried away so much with a good show.

Evita, in that regard, was a tremendous inspiration. Along with last year's Guys & Dolls at the Piccadilly Theater, starring Ewan McGregor and Jane Krakowski (both mind-blowingly amazing), it's by far the best musical I have seen in years. It's no coincidence considering they've been directed, choreographed and set designed by the same team, people about whom I'd like to say a quick word, I'm so awed with their skill.
First, obviously, is the director. Michael Grandage -- pretty much the best stage director in the UK. The man is the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse (having succeeded to now world-famous Sam Mendes, director of American Beauty and Road To Perdition). Without my knowing of it until last week, Grandage is the man behind both those musicals, but also one of the best plays I have seen in my life, Frost/Nixon -- in a completely different style. At the Donmar he produced some great classics, from Ibsen to Schiller, but also some modern greats (most notably Sam Shepard's The God Of Hell), and kept the stars coming to the house, hiring Ian McKellen to headline The Cut. The man's only been directing for a decade, having risen to fame in 2001 with his direction of Edward II, starring Joseph Fiennes, and he's already got 3 or 4 Olivier Awards. Evita and Guys & Dolls are Grandage's first big musicals -- and they're both life-changingly amazing. If I were a kid who dug dancing or singing and I saw one of those, I'd be ready to dedicate my life to the stage -- forever. They're that good.
His partner Rob Ashford, who choreographed the fantastic dance pieces in both musicals, is a Broadway veteran, and has also worked in film -- on Love Walked In and Beyond The Sea. His dance sets are the kind you don't see in musicals anymore -- dozens of dancers, all perfectly in sync, flying up in the air and bouncing off of walls, the stuff of 1930s MGM musicals. There isn't a single show other than the ones this man has choreographed where the dancing made me dream the way the dancing in West Side Story, Guys & Dolls and Singin' In The Rain made me dream as a kid.
As for production designer Christopher Oram, he's done several of Grandage's plays -- Guys & Dolls, Frost/Nixon, Grand Hotel, and this. Everything he works on makes me wonder at how the hell they came up with those amazing sets -- from all the different sets (the sewer tube, the mission, the streets of New York, Cuba), all so simple but yet all so captivating, and all perfectly designed for the dance piece staged within, in Guys & Dolls; to the simple couches, chairs, and lighting schemes which, despite their bare-bones form, transports you from a film studio to California to the White House to an airplane in mid-flight in Frost/Nixon. And Evita, as I'll come to later, is no exception -- and the set and production design is one of the things that sparked the most challenging chain of thought in me after the show.

Now it must be said I've never seen Evita, the movie, in full -- I've watched it right up about to the "Good Night & Thank You" bit and somehow lost track. That was when I was about 14, or 15, and at the time I remember thinking Antonio Banderas was great, Madonna was all right, but the singing -- the very operatic, unique, oddly flowing type of song --, with absolutely no talking at any point, was a bit much for my lil brain to handle, and I lost track, and interest, halfway through. After seeing the show, watching the movie again is a new priority.

The show, currently at the Adelphi and running since the fall, operates around a tremendously cool set. Essentially, there are three big "stone mansions" on every side of the stage, with balconies, and all three of them can slide forward and back. The balcony of the back one -- from which Eva sings "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" -- also stretches forward on its own, which is used only once, at that specific time, to great effect. All three also have working on-set doors and stairs, which means that in the middle of a setpiece, actors can run up them, and pop out at the balcony -- making the staging flow even more naturally between different beats of the story.
But as the show starts, you see none of it -- a great black screen covers the stage, over which the first few moments play, projected. Then the screen rises, and "Requiem For Evita" all the way through "Buenos Aires" play in what seems like a simple courtyard, a wall at the end of the stage. Once Eva moves to Buenos Aires, the wall rises, revealing the three-mansion set-up. It's a terrific effect if unexpected, and probably even otherwise, as you spend the first couple songs wondering how the hell they're going to make that set work for the whole show.
From there on, every different location, even indoor ones, are brought to life with the simplest of artifices -- a spotlight, a red curtain, a microphone and the right type of sound transports you right into Peron's auditorium speech; and suitcases packed as a podium amazingly work as the only set design at all as Eva travels through Spain, Italy and France. This is, as I said, where my mind got really inspired -- how much money would people save on films, if they could look at a script with that kind of perspective, trying to imagine how they'd make everything work if they only had one stage to work with? That's how you'd come up with small, simple things that would be enough to recreate a space, or the illusion of that space -- and you wouldn't need big, sweeping, expensive shots; tremendously time- and money-consuming production design. You'd just need the bare minimum, and it works even more wonderfully. And if they can do it on stage, where the audience can still, technically, see everything else behind and around the action -- then it should be even easier for film, where just having the edges of a frame helps focus the audience's attention, and limit their knowledge of the illusion. That's something that, maybe stupidly, had never occurred to me so clearly before, and I love toying with it now, and I can't wait to give it a go on the next short film I (sadly for it) unleash on the world.

The costume design also works along the same simplicity -- since most every character is pretty much either working-class, upper-class, or military, Oram just allocates every one of the groups with a specific get-up -- rolled-up sleeve shirts, suspenders and boots for the working class men; fancy frocks and suits for the upper-class; and green uniforms and caps for the military. It's been done before, I know, but it works fantastically here, as you never quite notice the different ensemble actors switching places and outfits as you go -- and just see every crowd as a crowd, with an opinion and personality, which is one of the points of the piece itself.

The cast, quite simply, just confirmed one of my theater mottos: barring very rare exceptions, if in any way possible, you need to see a show with its first-run cast. In a day where many musicals just try and cast "names" to put over their marquee, regardless of how ill-equipped said names are for their parts (see Don Johnson in Guys & Dolls, a bunch of people from EastEnders in Mamma Mia!, and Tony Hadley following Huey Lewis in Chicago), it makes a world of difference to see a show in which every part is played by the actor it was most directly intended for, rehearsed for and with, and in a way created or recreated by.
Evita is perfect proof of that. Elena Roger, the tiny little Argentinian actress, has been much written and talked about, and rightly so -- she plays Eva in a way that pretty much makes you forget anyone else, including Madonna. She's got drive, she's got power, she's got crazy eyes and the perfect accent, and she can dance like the best of them -- the first half of the show sees her being thrown into the air and soaring across the stage. She feels, looks, and sounds like Evita, small in person, but imposing and intimidating, but she also pulls the frailty demanded by the second part of the show. She was terrific enough for Maz to actually ask if we could go round the back of the theater to get her autograph -- which we did, waiting there for 15-20 minutes in the cold -- and it was damn worth it, because she'll be remembered as one of the select few who made a character such as that one entirely their own.
She's joined there by Philip Quast, who plays Peron, and alternates from sweet big bear type, to threatening, strong man of power, as I suspect the real Peron did. Quast is a 3 time Olivier Award winner, apparently best known as one of the most memorable Javerts in Miserables history, and he makes Peron live and breathe again.
There's also Gary Milner, who makes a tremendous Magaldi -- funny, awkward, sleazy, and whose gaucheness for some reason reminded me of Tim McInnerny in Blackadder. He pulls off the singing like the best too, and his rendition of "On This Night Of A Thousand Stars", including clumsy little dance moves, is one of the most hilariously endearing things I've ever seen in the theater. I've since read in the program that Magaldi once played Fred Casely in Chicago, and I would love to see his version of "Mr. Cellophane". Very, very talented guy.
And then there's my favorite -- Che. Performed terrifically by Matt Rawles, physically perfectly cast with his rough stubble, broken nose, and slight arrogance, and who even puts on an amazingly believable Latino accent as he sings. He also dances quite well, and he just blows so much energy and soul into the whole show -- "And the Money Kept Rolling In" was my favorite setpiece of the show greatly thanks to him, as he bounced around, jumped around, and belted like a rock star. I'd love to keep track of the guy, or see if he's got the same intensity in other parts, or in non-singing parts, because I think I saw something there -- and I'm no eye for talent like Maz is (she told me of Sienna Miller and James McAvoy before anyone had even remotely heard of their existence), but I feel quite confident about this one.

There's no need to say anything about the world famous songs -- hats off once again to Mr. Rice and Mr. Lloyd Webber is all that needs to be said. The show starts at a high, "Requiem For Evita" starting off with the most horrific shriek of grief and pain, and you get pulled right into the show's very specific mood and atmosphere as soon as Che rock 'n roll-ridicules it all with "Oh What A Circus". Follows the hilarious "On This Night Of A Thousand Stars", and then the first amazingly impressive set piece of the show -- attaching "Eve & Magaldi (Beware Of The City)" and "Buenos Aires" into one, continually crescendo, sequence, adding dancers and singing faster and crazier as it goes. That's when Mare and I leaned forward in our seats and craned our necks -- and knew this show was gonna be something special. In some musicals, something like that is a climax, a finale. Here -- it was the end of the first act.
And, amazingly, it cues RIGHT into "Goodnight & Thank You", which works terrifically (I know -- I'm running out of complimentary adjectives), mostly thanks to Roger, Rawles and Magaldi -- and the casting of a couple of Eva's suitors, who are just, well, funny lookin'.
The show keeps building and building and building -- to "Don't Cry For Me Argentina", where everyone really just gets out of the way and lets Roger and the song shine; and finally to "Rainbow High" and "And The Money Kept Rolling In", which are chained together to end the 2nd act, and are an energy and intensity high -- rock show-esque in the way it captures you and makes you want to join in (including one bit where, over "Rainbow High", Roger changes outfits three times, while on stage, seamlessly). And from there, as Evita's strength and life leaves her, so does the show's hugeness, replaced with emotion, simplicity, and a different kind of intensity. Thematically it comes together perfectly (as working-class Che and ruling Peron subtly, and briefly, exchange a face-off by Eva's bed -- blink and you miss it), and suddenly you feel and miss Evita the same way the Argentinian people must have, after having felt an exciting mix of admiration and condescension for her up until that point.

Mare and I gave it a standing ovation -- the two of us, in the 4th row, followed by a dozen other people in the stalls and maybe several more in the circle. Even if no one had stood up, it would've been worth the chance.

I'm looking for Michael Grandage's contact information as we speak. And I hope not only that I can integrate some of his tricks and craft in my films somewhere down the line, but also, who knows, that I someday might be able to find a choreographer, learn a bit about music, and, who knows, direct a half-decent stage musical myself... (Hey, a kid's allowed to dream, in' he?)