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Tina Arena as Eva Peron in Opera Australia’s revival of Evita.
Tina Arena as Eva Perón in Opera Australia’s revival of Evita. Photograph: Jeff Busby
Tina Arena as Eva Perón in Opera Australia’s revival of Evita. Photograph: Jeff Busby

Evita review: Tina Arena is resplendent and tough as designer dictator

This article is more than 5 years old

Sydney Opera House
In Opera Australia’s production, Eva Perón wins over a nation with a Christian Dior dress and steely determination, and a killer ballad steals the show

When Eva Perón finally transcends her peasant roots to become the first lady of Argentina, she is aware that her dizzying ascent is as much about appearance – a careful cultivation of stardom – as substance. “Christian Dior me!” she cries hungrily, as aides dress her on the Sydney Opera House stage. “From my head to my toes!”

At the very end of Evita, after she has passed away from cancer at the age of 33, that same tune is used again. This time, however, men in suits gather somberly around her deathbed. They sing not of jewels and dresses, shoes and bags, but eyes, ears and hair. Evita – the sweetheart of the nation, the saint of South America – is to be embalmed: frozen forever as a young woman. A mummified mannequin.

Tina Arena, as Eva Perón, with the cast of Evita. Photograph: Jeff Busby

The takeaway message in this full-throated, thorny production, put on by Opera Australia and starring pop star Tina Arena, is that riches, fame and power are illusions. Or maybe, conversely, there’s a more problematic message: that a Christian Dior dress, matched with a steely determination and an ability to pander to crowds, is all you need to captivate – and control – a nation. Who else after her untimely death, except perhaps Princess Diana, produced such shows of hysteria and public mourning?

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita, their third major show and the first hit to stray from biblical themes, opened at London’s Prince Edward Theatre in 1978. For its 40th anniversary, Opera Australia is following a winning formula, also seen in 2016’s revival of My Fair Lady: it has resurrected the very first production in its near entirety. At its helm is the original dream team: Harold Prince, now 90 and boasting a record 21 Tony awards, directs; Larry Fuller choreographs; and Timothy O’Brien has created the same vintage set.

In an era where production values have become ever more excessive – a bid in part to win over younger audiences (think Wicked or Opera Australia’s The Nose) – Evita is refreshingly sparse. A handful of furniture is mixed with a giant screen that shows footage of the real Eva Perón and the crowds who adored her. On a bare stage, doors and beds – both ever revolving, as Evita sleeps her way to the top – take on exaggerated significance and a simple game of musical chairs cleverly showcases political shenanigans.

At the centre of it all is Evita, played with a resplendent toughness by Arena. It is to her credit that in a few hours she can turn from a naive, if plucky, teenager eager to leave her poor upbringing behind to a grown woman ravaged by illness and yet still desperate to cling to the last vestiges of power.

Years on, the score stands the test of time too. This is a musical that relies on clever direction for the audience to feel the full bite of Rice’s often witty, sometimes pitiless, lyrics. Hear Don’t Cry For Me Argentina on the radio and it can come across as a cheesy ballad. Under Prince’s deft hands, the song shows its true colours: it is designed as a master class in political manipulation.

The military dictator Juan Perón has taken control of the country. Standing on a podium at his inauguration Evita addresses the nation in a snow-white ballgown (later, as her command tightens, she waltzes in a dark glittering ballgown, her transformation from white to black swan complete). Evita is aware she is delivering a song stuffed with platitudes: a simplified soundbite for the struggling classes. In a display of sham theatricality, she breaks away, apparently overcome with emotion, to cry on Juan’s shoulder, leaving the crowd to hum out the rest of the tune. It is only later when she is alone in a spotlight in her undergarments – her diamonds glittering cruelly, a reminder of the futility of wealth – that we see any real vulnerability.

Alexis Van Maanen in Evita. Photograph: Jeff Busby

Supporting Arena is Brazilian baritone and opera star Paulo Szot who carries a weight and measured authority as Juan Perón. The cynical narrator Che Guevara is played by London-based Australian Kurt Kansley with crisp diction and ballsy energy, his sole role to cast doubt upon Evita as saint and saviour.

It is newcomer Alexis Van Maanen, however, who is most memorable as Perón’s spurned mistress. When Evita chucks her out of her new lover’s bedroom – showing her capacity for cruelty and ruthless competitiveness – Maanen tentatively steps into the street with just a suitcase, a barely-there slip, and a fur coat over her shoulders. Her lament Another Suitcase in Another Hall, made me physically shiver.

Before Evita died, she gave one last tour in an open car. Her body, laid waste by the cancer, was kept upright by a structure of wires; experts now believe that she had undergone a lobotomy – one possibly ordered by Juan, who wanted his increasingly erratic wife kept quiet in her final days.

This scene isn’t shown in the musical. But it does end on a whimper, not a bang. There is no big song, no triumphant wrap-up, no cathartic release. Just a corpse on a stage. A sign, perhaps, that Evita built her image so successfully that in the end she became – and remains – little more than a projection.

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