Evita (Dir/J.Lloyd) -OAT 2019 / Barbican ‘20 / Palladium ‘25

I’d kill for a recreation of Hal Prince’s original staging.

BurlyBeaR are you able to merge 42ndBlvd's thread into this one... I think we got a double thread creation haha

But as said in the other thread apparently this is Palladium Summer 2025 and stars have been asked. Andrew wanted Lady Gaga?

Interesting! Where has the rumour come from?!

Is it a completely new production then?

Still think Palladium wrong theatre for Evita but obvs I’d go. Repeatedly.

That’s my fear, they always skimp on sets lol.

I’m fine with bare bones Evita as the piece is more than strong enough. But not in Palladium. Which I agree with you does indeed command some grandiosity.

Can’t believe they asked Auli’i 😱😱

I'd kill for that, too.

I didn't see Jamie Lloyd's - with a great relationship (apparently) with ALW, that's likely isn't it? I could accept that.

Really don't want to see any production that looks like a creaky stock touring show.  I'm kind of shocked at how dated and cosy some people can make this show appear, as my memory of Hal Prince's production was so far from that.  I still can't get over Kenwright's basic 'rags to riches' telling, with Eva singing 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina' to....the aristocracy.  Eh? What?! Why?

Even though the London Palladium, which is singularly the greatest theatre in the world is big, it is never a barn like the Apollo, Dominion etc and for its size is quite intimate. If Cats can work there, Evita can too.

I may be misquoting, but the original 1978 black box production got a critic saying (compared to the real Buenos Aires) it had 'all the colour of an NCP car park', lol.  But I'm absolutely here for the starkest white lighting, a skeletal set, and David Hersey's 'light curtain' which flashed so bright at the end of scenes you got an image a second later on the retina, and by the time you'd recovered the scene had changed.

I despised the revival productions. I thought the choreography and staging were just straight up awful and at times just an insult to the material. I'm biased towards Hal's version but I think the only production that's come close to being my favourite is from Asolo rep in 2017. The openning is beautiful:

Lets not forget it played the Prince Edward which is not a small stage either. 

True. They do feel different though. PE is massive but feels (to me) more intimate. Maybe it's the width of The Palladium that makes it feel so vast....

Yes I do fear that plonking the Hal Prince version as said without any changes would be a mistake. It's had its time in my opinion.

Plus, I think I said this in another thread, but when they brought it back for the International Tour, the choreography got utterly mangled by the new orchestrations and the additions they had to make contractually like You Must Love Me were horribly done. I think without Hal Prince around to advise anyone anymore, throwing his staging out there again runs the risk of coming off as tasteless if it doesn't work. Plus, I don't think many would like the idea of using his name to parade around something that vaguely resembles his work when it isn't.

I think a new Palladium staging that really uses the venue has the promise.