Evita (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 8/4/10)

I planned the second phase of my Stratford visit as a three-part nostalgia tour of shows I saw as a child or teenager.  The first of these was Evita.  (Left: Chilina Kennedy in the title role with Juan Chioran in the background; click images to enlarge.)

My first Evita was the original Broadway production, with Mandy Patinkin singing the role of Che, when I was around twelve or thirteen.  I loved the show, bought the LP -- yes, an actual record, and I probably still have it -- and listened to it until I'd memorized the entire first act.  (I learned that whole opening Latin prayer-song phonetically without having the faintest idea what it meant.)  I developed a crush on Patinkin-as-Che, the memory of which was enough to lure me to a somewhat dubious production of The Tempest a couple of years ago just for the chance to hear that voice in person again.

This sort of intense teenage imprinting on a particular production makes seeing a different one very problematic.  That first production was so definitive and my memory of the musical numbers so thorough that I suspected I was going to really resist enjoying anything short of an exact recreation of it.

So why bother?  Well, I really do love the soundtrack (or at least the first half of it; more about that below.)  And one of my favorite Stratford actors, Juan Chioran (whose performance in Dracula: A Chamber Musical I've been rhapsodizing about for over a decade), was singing Perón.  And I've been reading up a bit lately on Argentina's Dirty War, which made me rather thoughtful about how odd it must have been for a politically aware audience member during the show's original run, which coincided almost perfectly with the Dirty War.

I decided to take the chance, and it actually wasn't as big a problem as I'd expected.  Chilina Kennedy (Maria in last season's magnificent West Side Story) certainly had the vocal chops and acting skill for the title role, Chioran was entirely solid in the smaller part of Perón, and Josh Young (Stratford debut) is possessed of a beautiful voice very much reminiscent of Patinkin's, though he's almost too handsome for the role.  I also thought Josie Marasco (Anybodys from that West Side Story, though I saw her understudy) in her brief turn as the Mistress sang "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" superbly.  I occasionally choked slightly when Kennedy or Young would deliver a line with slightly different timing than the original, but that's a ridiculous level of obsession on my part -- these were differences of interpretation, not errors, and I told myself sternly to get over it.  And I did, enough to enjoy the production a great deal.

I did have some quibbles, though, the largest of which was the rather astonishing treatment of Che's role.  Young's performance in general was fine and vocally excellent, though I could have wished for a slightly edgier, more passionate portrayal.  But whose idea exactly was it to -- brace yourself -- have him remove his moustache, beard, and wig, onstage, making it very obvious that the otherwise convincing hair was all fake, and turn Young into a clean-shaven young waiter for the early scenes?  I just about had a coronary when he ripped the beard off.  The production conceit was that as the show went on, he got shaggier and less well-dressed, eventually turning up in fatigues and starting to grow the facial hair until he finally turned into the usual Che towards the end.  (Right, Young as Che, midway through the show.) This was carried off effectively, a triumph for the Festival's hair and makeup crew, who must have had a dandy time developing the sequence of hairpieces, but it was an enormous distraction (is his beard an inch longer now or not?) and an insane way to meddle with as visually iconic a cultural figure as Che.  I can't even figure out the logic of it.  To make Che fit into the story?  But that's completely unnecessary in a narrator figure, and -- hello! -- using a historic figure like Che as a narrator is a completely theatrical device anyway.  What is the point of Che if he doesn't look like Che?  I don't object to some reinterpretation, but this was an idiotic idea and an unfortunate distraction from Young's performance.  (You can see pictures of Patinkin as Che in the original production here.  Notice the look doesn't change throughout.)

I noticed the dancing (choreographer: Tracey Flye), of course.  They used a pair of tango dancers -- for a fairly loose definition of tango -- as visual icons of seduction while Perón and Evita flirt, and at one point during "Buenos Aires" the whole chorus suddenly broke into a tango, which at intervals turned into a...maxixe.  I was torn between excitement at watching some rather good maxixe (the dancers even got the forward and back lean, which is more than I've ever managed) and a sort of horrified amusement: the maxixe, of course, is Brazilian.  I guess all those wacky countries down in South America are culturally indistinguishable, eh?  I'm reasonably certain that I was the only person in the entire house who was familiar with the maxixe, but still.

In a later scene with some waltzing I also wanted to hop up on stage and give them the same tips for that style of waltz ("new" waltz, in the 19th-century terminology) I give my Monday night students...who are, by the way, better waltzers.  Chioran and Kennedy were substantially better in this scene than the chorus, who looked like they were making way too much effort for very dubious results.  Coming up with some way to offer social dance lessons to actors is high on my to-do list.

The only non-social dance bits that particularly jumped out at me were the amusingly goose-stepping military corps in "Peron's Latest Flame" and the unpleasantly awkward line of used gentlemen in "Goodnight and Thank You."  That latter bit was just painful to watch.

Designwise, they used a two-level girder-style set that looked like it emigrated from the recent Ragtime revival, which I first thought predictable: of course, they would need a balcony for "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."  And they used it as a balcony very effectively in "Goodnight and Thank You."  But then, unaccountably, they ignored it for "Don't Cry" and did much of that song from the lower level, center stage front, with a section of the stage rising up into a balcony only rather late in the song.  The only explanation I can quite think of for this is that the second level of the set was too far upstage for the audience to feel like they were part of the audience-within-the-show.  I can't remember if this was a trick in the original production as well.  Since I was sitting in the extreme rear orchestra, it didn't much affect me.  Perhaps it was different in the first few rows.

The cheek-microphones are obtrusive and obnoxious.  The sound design was quite good, and unlike recent Broadway productions, you could actually tell who and where the singing was coming from.  But the mics really jump out at you visually, even more so than the forehead-wart variety.  Can't they find a less distracting way to mic the actors?  (Left, Chioran and Kennedy and a really obvious cheek-mic.)

I promised above to come back to why I really only love the first half of the soundtrack.  It carries over to the stage production as well: the first act was great, and the second act dragged horribly.  But I don't think that's any fault of this production.

I hadn't thought much about my listening pattern before, but after seeing the show as an adult, undistracted by my teenage susceptibility to bearded ear candy, I think the problem is less than the soundtrack than the show itself.  Regardless of whether you see the show's heroine as a proto-feminist and class warrior or simply a slut sleeping her way to the top, the first half has a strong dramatic arc as Evita claws her way out of poverty all the way to the Casa Rosada, reaching a natural climax with the balcony scene that opens the second act, with that strong visual of Evita in white on the balcony with her arms upraised singing "Don't Cry for Me Argentina."  The songs of the first act drive the story compellingly.  Tim Rice is not exactly Sondheim, but he does have his moments:

Fill me up with your heat, with your noise
With your dirt, overdo me
Let me dance to your beat, make it loud
Let it hurt, run it through me.

(From "Buenos Aires," a catchy love song to the big city that reminds me of my own affection for New York City.)  Lloyd Webber displays his accustomed talent for writing music that sticks in the brain.  And the story snaps along.

But the whole thing collapses after "Don't Cry."  The second act's story is what, financial corruption, publicity, and then Evita's early death from cancer?  There's no drama here.  Whether the "Rainbow Tour" succeeds is not nearly as compelling a question as whether Evita will fulfill her ambitions.  This a huge structural problem: the climax comes far, far too early, and there's really nothing but filler after it.  It's the show itself, and it's unfixable even by a fine production.  I hadn't consciously realized this before, but I think in a way I've known it all along, and thus rarely bothered listening to any song after "Don't Cry."  I half wish the show had ended there, maybe with a brief epilogue from Che noting that she died of cancer at thirty-three and (this is the show's actual one-line epilogue) that her body then disappeared for seventeen years.

After all this verbiage, the short version: mostly high-quality production of a flawed show.

A final note: I attended an interesting conversation with Festival General Director Antoni Cimolino and education guru Pat Quigley this morning, and among the ideas floated by the very well-informed and thoughtful audience was that Evita was essentially Lady M and the show a riff on the Scottish play.  That's an interesting interpretation, with some validity: Evita and Perón in "Dice are Rolling" interact exactly the same way as Lady M propping up her husband's nerve: "But screw your courage to the sticking-place and we'll not fail!"  And it's there in Evita's real life as well: both onstage and off, she dies young and her husband then loses power.  But the Scottish play still has substantial plot left after the rise to power, where Evita goes off the rails, and even after Lady M's death, where Evita ends.  So it's not a perfect parallel, but it gave me some food for thought.  I wonder if Rice and Lloyd Webber have ever addressed the issue.

Comments

[Serge]

also wanted to hop up on stage and give them the same tips for that style of waltz

Good thing you didn't go thru with it otherwise you'd have become persona non grata at Stratford. Either that or they'd have hired you on the spot.

[Serge]

By the way, when I think of "Evita", I am reminded of 1980's "Superman". For those whose brain isn't cluttered with useless facts, there is a scene in that movie where the Kryptonian baddies throw a bus at Superman, and on the side of the bus is a banner for the aforementionned play.