Rachel Zegler is not the problem

Evita, Palladium Review and Star Ranking: ★★★

All PhDs can be written about publicity campaigns for Evita Jamie Lloyd. Hundreds of people gathered outside Palladium every night to watch Rachel Zegler Belt ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ from the Balcony Theater for free, a pleasant PR action that became very popular so that the risk of being closed by the police, while ticket holders, some pay more than £ 245 per seat, must be satisfied watching shows through video links.

And on the opening night, Keanu Reeves, Jessica Alba and Pedro Pascal were a few meters of A-Listers from me who gave a lot of applause in the first round in the end, but half an hour into the show. It is common to see the British acting tit by West End Opening Nights, but a random collection of A-Listers that is not very well known because the theater shows how far outside the West End landscape that has been passed by this production.

Why? This is from Jamie Lloyd, the producer of Zeitgeisty behind the Sunset Boulevard 2023, the man who basically reinforces what the West End looks like, so whatever he does produces a buzz. This also stars Rachel Zegler, the most famous is harassed racially for playing Snow White. Lloyd uses direct video effects and radical aesthetic (thinking of lighting and design set from Pop Arena Wembley performances) to make the point that theater can be bigger, harder, and more ambitious. But where the sunset boulevard is more a soft character study, Evita is mainly a series of phenomenal ensemble numbers. In the end it feels more like a music concert than the conventional part of the theater story.

Evita: Palladium Musical offers new thoughts about what music can

As for Zegler, with deviant eyes or the slope of his head, he found depth in the story of the Argentine leader, finding self -confidence and vulnerability to the tragic figure. Evita was inspired by the real life story of Eva Perón, an Argentine working class who married President Juan Peron and died of 33 -year -old cervical cancer. He was seen as a contradictory figure because he helped build the rights of workers and leave, but became the initial champagne socialist; For some people, his love for the Christian Dior dress and better things in life feels contrary to his attitude about equality.

The event was running in three hours but felt half because it was filled with a truly extraordinary choreography and a litani music number, compiled by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s hard to imagine that whatever stimulating this has been played at West End before. There are several very beautiful lighting designs by Jon Clark; One bit attached to the memory is the faces that are illuminated from dozens of workers who are pressed peeking through the level of performance such as ghost sightings.

However, I was not alone in finding Evita’s hard work. The outdated scripts introduce various historical characters without the right place to place them in the context, or explain their role correctly. The cast needs more space to tell stories with visual cues, but with almost no lacked lines – everything is delivered in verse as Opera Rock – This show is difficult to follow for people who do not know the story well. This is an endless energy and a high octane choreo with very little time to really sit with their characters and feelings.

At the interval, other journalists admit to me that they found a difficult show. That does not help that production music beats the lyrics. Rachel Zegler’s diction in particular became difficult to understand when he sang, and it was the same for the Ensemble rate: Too often it was very difficult to capture what they said.

This raises all questions about accessibility, and the amount of knowledge audience must arise. Some criticisms will say the musical cult is designed for big fans, but I tend to turn to production that thinks must be understood by newcomers. While Evita Jamie Lloyd offers a lot of fresh thoughts about the scope of production values ​​that may be in the cinema that is one hundred years old, I can’t not feel disappointed that so much happened above my head.

Evita played in London Palladium until September 6