Sarah on theater

As someone who walked in as a Rachel Zegler skeptic, I have to eat some (but perhaps not the entire) crow here. She is immaculately cast in Jamie Lloyd’s “Evita,” not least because a challenging sung-through is much better suited to her strengths than last year’s “Romeo + Juliet.” (Never fear, though, she still has an opportunity to unconvincingly slump over and die.) The other reason she’s so good here is—well, let’s talk about the balcony.

If you’ve paid attention to the hype for this show at all—I don’t even really consider it a spoiler—you already know that Zegler performs one of its centerpiece numbers, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” in full Eva Perón drag from the front balcony of the London Palladium. It’s more than a little reminiscent of the Act 2 opener of the title track from Lloyd’s recent production of “Sunset Boulevard,” and it would be easy to dismiss it as trivial repetition of a gimmick, because, to some extent, it is. The thing is that—whereas the exterior walk sequence in that earlier show was merely jawdropping as a technical and performative feat—this time around, it feels critical to the story, too. Lloyd & co. use multiple panning, sometimes-overlaid camera angles and microphones to show you not just the performance, but also the gathered crowd below, which was what I would describe as “holy shit”-large. It’s a moment that instantly, credibly, stunningly characterizes Eva’s relationship with the public by leveraging Zegler’s own fame, and there are very few actresses with the necessary combination of age, heritage, vocal talent, and cultural cachet to make this scene (and this part) work like this. Casting her was a real coup.

That the balcony scene feels so essential is also a function of the relative sparseness of the rest of the production—which is to say that by that point we’re practically dying for a drop of characterization. What we mostly get is modern pop concert staging. Other than the balcony sequence, in lieu of a period costume, Zegler is clad in a black leather bullet bra and hot pants. The set resembles stadium bleachers with giant, light-up letters E-V-I-T-A on top. The lights strobe. The sound is cranked up. The choreography is a real whirl of vigor.

It’s a spectacular way to take in a dynamic, genre-spanning score, which, beyond Zegler, also sounds pretty electric coming out of Diego Andrés Rodriguez‘s mouth. The insiders (not me) who saw him understudy Joe Gillis in “Sunset” were adamant that he had leading-man chops, but that undersells what I would consider a star-making turn here. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera offers him a number of opportunities to leap into an impressive upper register, and, since his character, Che, is supposed to represent a plank of public perception of the Peróns, he spends much of the show leading the public (err—the ensemble) in dance, as well. It’s a remarkably committed performance even before you consider that, once again, as in “Sunset,” he’s stripped down to his undies and covered in fake blood (and also paint!).

So, yeah, about that last bit. Lloydisms giveth and they taketh away, and they’re certainly here in force. The stark staging and simple costuming once again allow for a lot of choreographic freedom, but the lyrics don’t make up the gap as effectively in establishing time and place. For a period piece like this with complex story beats about political process, that can make it a little tough to follow; this is an “Evita” that feels mostly divorced from its book and historical context. It simply feels like this material is less well suited to all these minimalist decisions than “Sunset,” which employed them so successfully to magnify its story and the emotional truth therein. For as impressive as the execution may be, it feels like the show is being deployed in service of Jamie Lloyd’s vision, rather than the other way around. Ironically, it’s the one sequence with the big-ass screen that feels like the exception to this. Who woulda thunk it? It’s good, but not transcendent.