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Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. Evita Also see Susan's review of Awake and Sing!
Grandage's rethinking of the pop opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics) places the story of Eva Perón on a human scale compared with the epic sweep of Harold Prince's original Broadway production in 1979. Rather than an enormous cast, Grandage uses a versatile chorus and incorporates newsreel footage to tell the story of the poor young woman from the Argentine provinces who used her beauty, brains, and raw ambition to become the first lady of the nation. The strength of Bowman's performance is her sincerity throughout (as the expression goes, if you can fake that, you've got it made). She's likable, even ingenuous, as the 15-year-old Eva who manipulates tango singer Agustin Magaldi (Christopher Johnstone) into taking her to Buenos Aires. She's apparently guileless as she welcomes and dismisses a succession of lovers who help with her climb to prominence. And when she meets Juan Perón (Sean MacLaughlin), she makes fun of her own boldness in approaching him. The darker emotions emerge in the personal triumph and tragedy of the second act. The problem is that neither of Bowman's co-stars has enough gravitas to balance her. MacLaughlin gives a forthright portrayal of Perón as a political pragmatist—and this Perón truly loves Eva, breaking down during her final illness—but he lacks the sense of single-mindedness that led the man to prevail over military rivals and become the autocratic ruler of the nation. On the other hand, fury should be the motivating force behind Che, the narrator and one-man Greek chorus challenging Eva's appeal. Max Quinlan plays this malcontent—in this production, an Everyman rather than a revolutionary—as boyish, striking at Eva's pretensions but never really drawing blood. Ashford's choreography is muscular and visually striking: much of the staging for the chorus centers on athletic, leg-swinging tangos, while "The Art of the Possible" replaces musical chairs with wrestling as a metaphor for seizing political power. Kennedy Center
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