Voice of the people

27016162

Eva Peron, called "Evita" by those adoring and duped masses, the "shirtless" ones of Argentina, was a woman of remarkable determination, guile and wickedness. Argentina’s renowned man of letters, Jorge Luis Borges, characterized her as a "common prostitute." But she did — as the authors of the show based on her life stress — have "style."

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita is about the rags-to-riches rise of Eva Peron, mistress/wife of the Argentine dictator, Col. Juan Peron. During most of his regime, she was the power behind the bed and before the public.

Evita is an attempt to relate in musical terms the story of the rise and decline of the quick-witted Argentine gamine who found fame and astonishing political power before succumbing to cancer at age 33 in 1952 and becoming an adored legend in the minds of her country’s masses.

Unlike the typical run of great Broadway entertainment — whether plays or musicals — Evita is full of political sound and ideological fury. Just what it all signifies is open to question.

In the view of Webber and Tim Rice, the gentlemen who fashioned this pop quasi-documentary set to music, Eva was spunky, iron-willed, flagrantly corrupt and a canny mistress of horizontal levitation. With few visible qualms, Evita trades on the voguish temper of the age, which holds that however sleazy, venal or decadent a person is, her rise to the top confers chic, even fame upon immoral carrion.

Evita is an eye-catcher, but it seldom gets a grip on a playgoer’s feelings. For one thing, the basic tale has been told too often. It is the familiar show-biz saga of a nobody from nowhere who, through wile and gumption, achieves wealth, fame and glory as a dazzling superstar. In the case of Evita, this tale has been telescoped and occasionally tampered with. Most of the key events happen offstage. They are described in song and dance and recitative, but not dramatically rendered, so the musical lacks the warming pulse of intimacy.

The show is astutely structured to elicit some sympathy for Eva (Ana Maria Andricain) and to present her as something of a scrappy feminist. It begins with her funeral and ends with her death. In flashbacks, she flees from her barren Pampas birthplace to glamorous Buenos Aires, arriving as the amorous baggage of a cornball guitarist.

She soon acquires a sardonic shadow, a one-man Greek chorus in the anomalous figure of Che Guevara (Jeffrey Coon). Che dogs every step of Eva’s checkered ascent through calculated boudoir encounters and forays into stage, films and radio until she meets, seduces and marries Peron (Scott Holmes) and comes to wield an awesome share of his dictatorial power.

The idea of using Guevara as a moral commentator and social conscience is quintessentially farcical. While others in this role have blurred the content, barking out the lines with fierce indignation, Coon’s cultured voice and persuasive swagger illuminate the rhetoric and give the character a powerful urgency while achieving just the right slogan-like simplicity.

Eva is an incendiary figure that seems to burn with the borrowed fuel of the legend. As Peron, Holmes subtly alternates between the wariness of a man walking through a political minefield with the sweaty lust for power engendered by his Lady Macbeth.

No sooner is she in her coffin than the symbolic figure of Che Guevara comes on, complete with beret, beard and cigar. "Oh, what a circus, oh, what a show," he sings. "Argentina has gone crazy over the death of an actress named Eva Peron."

Che, the revolutionary and guerrilla fighter, is used throughout as commentator and Greek chorus, but he’s really the uneasy conscience of the show’s creators. And the vigor of Coon’s excellent performance only underscores the fact that Che is being used to nag us, to tell us what to think.

The show moves on an entirely musical pulse — there is no spoken dialogue. In 1979, this unusual technique was effective, but the novelty may have worn off. The same is true of Rice’s lyrics, which can lurch from chic to vulgar, as when Evita sings, "I’m their savior, that’s what they’ll call me/So Lauren Bacall me." All the same, the Walnut’s Evita is a stunning, exhilarating experience.

Richard Stafford’s arresting choreography and Bruce Lumpkin’s astute staging neatly underscore Eva’s isolated eminence. A group of aristocrats in full evening dress shuffles across the stage spewing venom at the people’s "saint." In counterpoint, an army platoon does an absurdist parody of a close order drill while scurrilously sneering at Peron’s latest flame.

As Eva, Andricain can act, sing and dance, and has the proper edge for the role. She beautifully transmits the driving force and the astonishing charisma that made an ambitious trollop into a tremendous political force and a folk saint for millions of people. John Farrell’s two-level steelwork set design nicely accommodates Lumpkin’s vigorous staging and Jeffrey Koger’s lighting gives everything an eerie, haunting glow.

Evita
Through July 6
Walnut Street Theatre
825 Walnut St.
Tickets: $10 – $55
215-574-3550
www.wstonline.org