The Art and Politics of ‘Evita’

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“You’d be bombed. The house would be bombed,” says Gustavo Zajac when asked if the Tony-winning Evita could be staged in Argentina.

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Photo courtesy Skylight Music Theatre

Gustavo Zajac

Gustavo Zajac

Fortunately, the Buenos Aires-born director-choreographer will produce Evita this month in the safer environs of Skylight Music Theatre’s Cabot Theatre. The Perónista movement remains strong in the musical’s Argentine setting, and although the show’s doubtful protagonist, Eva Perón, died 70 years ago, her followers—most of them unborn when she lived—still paint haloes around her image. “There are scenes that would not be acceptable to them,” Zajac explains.

Evita began as a 1976 rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, the authors of Jesus Christ Superstar; it was staged as a musical on London’s West End in 1978 before moving to Broadway a year later where it entered the pantheon of contemporary musical theater. Evita became familiar beyond theatergoers from the 1996 film with Madonna in the title role.

“I didn’t like it when I first saw it, but for the sake of research I watched the movie again and I fell in love with it—the pace of the cinematography, Zajac says. “I will do my best to achieve that rhythm.”

Dangerous Legacy

The internationally regarded director and choreographer grew up in the turmoil of Argentine politics, much of it concerning the legacy of Eva Perón and her husband, the nation’s dictator during the 1940s and ‘50s, Juan Perón. He explains that his focus for Evita is the musical’s opening line, “Oh, what a circus / Oh, what a show,” emphasizing that Eva was “living her life as a show, a performance.” Argentina’s first lady was born into poverty and drawn to the bright lights of Buenos Aires where she pursued a career acting on radio, stage and screen. Zajac thinks her pursuit of power “was in response to the fact that she was a bad artist, a frustrated artist. This made her vengeful and power thirsty because she didn’t succeed as an artist. We’ll show her as an artist in construction and an artist in ruins. Her life was an artistic journey.”

She was most successful in performing the politics of resentment—a champion of the poor who draped herself in jewels, a populist crusader against the educated elites who looked down on her, a charismatic disruptor whose reputation was preserved by dying young. “Had Eva continued, we would have experienced her decline,” Zajac says. “If the country had gone bankrupt, people wouldn’t have loved her—she gave out money but didn’t create real wealth. Her death”—at age 33—“created a myth.”

She is credited with the positive accomplishment of giving Argentine women the right to vote, but as Zajac says, history was moving in that direction without her. “Nowadays,” he continues, “we’re learning what happens when a bad politician provides something good for some people—it’s not a justification for fascism in the end.” He adds that the author of Evita’s book, Tim Rice, was unequivocal. Rice called her “a monster.”

Earlier productions sometimes identified Evita’s narrator, Che, with the Argentine Communist who helped win the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara. Zajac rejects the connection, saying that in Argentina, “che” is a slang word corresponding to “hey” in English. In his production, Che is “Hey You” i.e. Everyman.

Tango Dancing

Webber may have been a sterling tunesmith when he wrote Evita’s music, but he was culturally tone deaf, confusing Argentina with its musically distinct neighbor. The only Latin tempo is a samba, a rhythm originating in Brazil, not Argentina. Zajac was involved in Evita’s 2006 London production where efforts were made “to make it more authentic.” There will be a showstopping tango by dancers he describes as among the world’s finest, and yet, “the music isn’t really tango,” Zajac admits. “The new arrangements help,” but “Webber didn’t have the intention to write Argentinian music.”

Well, most theatergoers have overlooked the musical false notes. “It’s an amazing book,” Zajac says of Rice’s work. “It tells the story of a woman and a nation. I like the epic side to it. It’s the history of a people in their poverty, their hopes and their hopes being crushed. It’s bigger than her.”

Skylight Music Theatre presents Evita, Feb. 3-19, at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Cabot Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. The cast includes Rána Roman as Eva Perón and Andrew Varela as Juan Perón. For more information, visit skylightmusictheatre.org.