Evita revival - Curve Leicester Christmas 2023

I'm so torn with this. Evita is one of favourite shows and I still can't decide whether I can make the effort to get across to Leicester to see this (for some reason it's not the easiest of places to get to on public transport from Manchester)
This trailer doesn't sell it for me either, but also I don't hate it

x.com/ShaunTossell/status/1735982281838170597?t=cq6Qg1aZWfcTUGxHNADJLA&s=09

I loved the Regents Park production so an updated version isn't a problem for me.

No. 

Hello, first post on the board but I'm going in the deep end!

I saw the matinee today with Chumisa Dornford-May as Eva. I thought she tackled the score really well as it's such a difficult sing. She wasn't quite relaxed in the role but I think some more years experience would mean she can definitely deliver a solid Eva.

Now for a lengthy review 😬

I love Evita and this is the forth version I have seen. I think this production takes a lot of big swings which often missed for me. A "modern" Evita can work but it needs to reflect modern Argentina (whose politics are crazy at the moment in any case).

Personally, I don't think the camera concept went far enough in this case. The use of the cameras seemed sometimes random and unmotivated unlike Sunset that knows exactly what it's doing. Nikolai Foster seems to be trying to be making a comment on toxic traditional broadcast media with the interviews and references to the This Morning wheel competition drama. This might work if Che was more of a shooter/producer who is always behind the camera and therefore we are seeing the story through his bias. But sometimes he is, sometimes he isn't. It's a bit messy as is.

It seems to me that this whole concept is kinda dated. Why would political disruptors like the Peróns be using traditional media to be talking to the everyday people - they would use social media and live streaming to cut through. It should have been phones rather than TV cameras that this production should have used to reflect today. Che is basically Eva's biggest troll anyway.

I love Tyrone Huntley and he should have been perfect on paper but here he is too nice for Che and it pains me to say slightly miscast. This is made worse when they give some of his lines to the ensemble which waters down his authority even more.

Nikolai Foster does produce some interesting images and sight gags though and the show is strongest in its group numbers. I always welcome reinventing classic shows as they should never become fossils however, I wonder if this should have been workshopped a little bit more.

Overall, this is somewhere between Bill Ks tired version and the Regents Park version for me.

Sorry for the ramble!

In my interpretation at least Eva is using social media. I thought her bits to camera during the art of the possible and a new Argentina were videos she posted to social media the screen being a rectangle really gave it the look of a phone screen to me at least. I also feel like they only had Che as a to personality when he directly interacts with Eva news reporters during perons latest flame and high flying adored game show presenter etc the rest of the time he’s a narrator which given THATS how the role is credited in the programme is probably how Nikolai views the character. Im also jealous you got to see Chumisa as Eva I’m probably going to go back just for her. I may have rambled on a bit here.

Good shout, I noted the vertical aspect ratio (and that it was always off to the side irked me, I get that the stair takes up stage left a lot of the time but it moves- so can the projection?) but didn't even think of connecting it to a phone screen or social media... Thinking back I think it was the strong aesthetic of that vintage silver camera dolly they were using that I assumed rooted it to the story's era. The other handheld camera rig was much more modern/neutral/subtle (matte black metal), maybe using a more modern dolly would help with the (assuming) intentional anachronism?

and perhaps having social media app icons imprinted on the video footage to make it more obvious?

I had no idea what this production was trying to achieve. Other than present a story "inspired by" Eva Peron. It was not the story of Eva in any meaningful way.

Just watching the trailer and weirdly I like it more than I enjoyed the show! I almost want to go again to make sure I didn't like it. Almost.

The dynamic pricing for this is really infuriating!! I have tickets for this for an evening show and wanted to change them to the matinee on the same day, and a seat that isnt in as good a location as the one I had (which is centre stalls) is £19 more!! Fuming

I went to today’s matinee (4th January), and having watched this production (after seeing the awful Drury Lane concert back in August), I have come to the realisation that EVITA is not really for me. Whilst some of the music is nice, dramatically it is just not very interesting, and I still think you need to come to the show with some sense of the actual events to truly understand what is going on, which is a massive fault of the storytelling.

The role of Eva is poorly written vocally often having to belt at the extremities of range so that it sounds like she is shouting. This is certainly what I felt with Martha Kirby’s Eva, and her portrayal suffered as a result.

I also couldn’t help but compare this production unfavourably to Jamie Lloyd’s SUNSET, as it heavily reminded me of it, being quite close aesthetically, but EVITA wasn’t done anywhere near as well.

There was a lack of attention to detail in the camera work - things could have been angles better to fit on the screens, and sometimes they just left the camera facing the floor so that it was just projecting the staircase. The staircase was sometimes poorly positioned to partially obscure the screen, and it would have been better if this fit the whole width of the stage.

The choreography is also not as snappy or energetic as SUNSET.

I know these comparisons aren’t necessarily fair, but I just had SUNSET very clearly in my head from Saturday. I also came out humming the music of SUNSET, which is surely not a good sign.

Had I seen EVITA first, I maybe would have enjoyed it more. There were some nice moments (such as the first and last stage images).

3 stars

Performances cancelled today and both Martha Kirby and her understudy are indisposed

Eh? How’s that supposed to work?