Review: Evita at Theatre Royal, Newcastle

Jun 25 2009 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

IT’S been doing the rounds for 30 years, yet I’ve managed never to see it. And, yes, that is what I mean to say.

I confess that, West Side Story aside, I’m not much of a musical fan but there are some ‘biggies’ you feel – eventually – you ought to see.

While Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s take on the extraordinary rise from obscurity to popularity of Eva Perón has held its ground for more than three decades, can you name a song? Apart from the number one hit Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, that is.

That’s obviously the one people wait for, and here it’s done full justice by the soaring, power-packed vocals of Rachael Wooding.

A petite Perón, Wooding plays her from 15-year-old peasant girl through her star status as wife of the president of Argentina (Mark Heenehan as Juan Perón) to her death from cervical cancer at the age of 33 – a Jade Goody of her time perhaps: winning, losing and winning again the empathy of the people during a butterfly transformation.

In capturing Perón’s single-minded ambition, the only trace of vulnerability we see is physical, coming only in the latter stages of the first lady’s illness in a touching emotional scene with her husband before her death.

What I hadn’t realised, and probably should have, is that Evita has no spoken dialogue at all, and some of this can’t be easy to sing. On occasion, in fact, it was difficult to make out words or else they were lost in the stirring music.

And none of the songs really suit the voice of Seamus Cullen as Che Guevara, but at least his acting skills are called upon in what is fundamentally the role of narrator and Evita’s moral conscience.

There was another song I found I recognised – Another Suitcase in Another Hall (So Happens Now?) which, sung by Carly Bawden, was a highlight in the show.

She sang it so beautifully – and seemingly effortlessly – that you could have heard a pin drop. Lovely coat too.

Indeed the costumes, and scenes, capture the true feel of the era. Scenes involving the good-looking chorus work particularly well, and several feature talented local youngsters from Stagecoach in Newcastle.

While the show hasn’t done anything to spark a love of musicals in me, the audience loved it.

Barbara Hodgson