Should we cry for this Evita?

London has a new place to be. I’m not a fan of theatre director Jamie Lloyd—as you’ll know if you read this column last December—but there’s no denying he knows how to put theatre at the centre of our cultural conversation. Not just that, but he’s got people flocking to one location, at one time, to experience the kind of theatre that depends on shared participation. Prospect readers will have likely seen clips and photographs of Rachel Zegler appearing on the balcony of the London Palladium as a bleach-blonde Eva Perón, declaiming “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” to the crowds below. The excitement of the moment, however, has to be experienced in person—though you’ll have to get there early. By the time I arrived at 8.30 on an evening last week, ahead of Zegler’s 8.55 appearance, the queue was already blocking most of Argyll Street.

As other reviews will have told you by now, no one is getting to see Evita “for free” simply by catching one song outside the theatre. If anything, Lloyd makes fools of the naive crowds outside the London Palladium. As Zegler’s Eva serenades the crowds of Buenos Aires with the false humility of her first broadcast as first lady of Argentina, she is beamed back into the auditorium—and so are we, the crowd, as images of our gormless adoration are layered onto screens against her image for the sharper, wiser audience inside the theatre. The true Eva, after all, was a Trumpian populist whipping up the resentments of the “descamisados”, or “shirtless” labourers of Argentina. Zegler declares to the outdoor crowds that her strings of diamonds are “taken from the oligarchs, only for you,” while the indoor crowd shift in their £350 seats and wait for her return and eventual fall. (And yes, of course, there are cheaper tickets.) In the long run, with two hours of pulsating rock opera and pumping choreography to enjoy, they are having the better time.

That doesn’t prevent the Argyll Street experience from being plenty of fun—it’s well worth popping along if you’re in the area. It’s not entirely clear that the street event will last the summer in its current form, as local authorities fear it has so swiftly overgrown the limits of safe crowd-control.

For now, it offers West End theatre priceless advertising as a sector: I stood beside two separate groups of Americans discussing which of their friends back home would love a recommendation for some London shows. It also captures something fundamental about Eva’s place in Argentine political history. Which is why it’s frustrating that, inside the theatre, Lloyd’s production is so lacking in political context and storytelling cues that you’ll struggle to follow the story, let alone the political nuance.

If you do know the story, that doesn’t matter. This is effectively a staged concert performance with a spectacular lead singer in Zegler, who triumphs over the punishing vocal range and harsh intervals of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score while dancing her leather pants off. The energy is overwhelming. As the Guardian’s chief theatre critic, Arifa Akbar, summed it up: “If you feel denied of the subtleties of story, character and commentary on populist power, you will still have an eye-popping night out.”

The second act, as Eva’s puppet-husband Juan Perón takes power as president of Argentina, is where the confusion matters most. Lloyd likes to strip things back and, in this case, he strips out any props or backdrops that might tell us where or why Eva is scheduling diplomatic visits in “Rainbow Tour”. The preceding number, “Rainbow High”, should walk us through the fashion makeover Eva undertakes to play the role of first lady—except that, as in recent flop The Tempest, Lloyd gives us a scene built around the appeal of flashy clothing without actually showing us the clothes. If you could hear Zegler over the deafening band, you’d learn she was singing about Christian Dior—but, as it is, she’s reduced to miming the outlines of an invisible flowing skirt.

On the evidence of both shows, it’s possible that Jamie Lloyd simply isn’t very interested in clothes. On the evidence of Evita, however, it also seems he’s not interested in why women collaborate with patriarchy—whether it’s conforming to beauty myths or trading sex for power—as Lloyd Webber’s musical repeatedly accuses Eva of doing.

Evita has always traded in misogyny: as the critic Nancy Durrant writes in the latest edition of her must-read Substack, “how many ways, it seems to ask, mockingly, can we call this fascinating, electrifying, resilient woman a whore?” In fact, the historical record suggests that, in Eva’s early days, the inequality of 1930s Buenos Aires and the sexually exploitative culture of showbusiness left power firmly in the hands of the male producers she encountered. In one famous incident, the impresario Pablo Suero left Eva sitting outside his office for hours, before emerging to shout at her, in front of a crowd of other queuing suppliants: “Do you think that because I slept with you, I’m always obliged to give you work?”

You wouldn’t get this from Lloyd Webber’s determinedly pre- MeToo musical, where such men are treated as fools to be discarded in sequence. Even Augustín Magaldi, the touring star alleged here to have picked her up when she was 15, is no predator but “has the distinction of being the first man to be of use to Eva Duarté.”

None of this is Lloyd’s invention—it’s baked into the show. But under his direction, Zegler leans into the harsh and grasping side of Evita, with little of her vulnerability. As Magdali, whom Jimmy Nail made suitably oily in Alan Parker’s 1996 film, Aaron Lee Lambert is instead a cuddly teddy-bear, blindsided by her exploitation.

Juan Perón was 48 to Eva’s 24 when they married, and a hardened politician. As played by James Olivas here, he’s a blank-faced, muscled youth—a Ken doll to her Barbie. (She’s everything. He’s just Ken.) The duet that marks their meeting, “I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You”, is coldly transactional, with none of the softness and seduction that marked it in previous Evitas. Without a hint of earlier romance, it’s hard to understand Perón’s later moment of devastation at her death.

Not that Zegler’s Eva was ever going to be into romance: she just rolls her eyes and stomps at the foolishness of her enemies, a fascist pocket-rocket fuelled by relentless ambition. As such, she’s very, very good. In her final moments, facing terminal illness, she tells the audience that she has chosen to exhaust her energies in a short, brilliant life rather than a long, easy one. (“The choice was mine, and mine alone”.)

In fact, she died of cervical cancer at 33, almost certainly passed to her by Perón, whose first wife had previously died of uterine cancer at 36. Lloyd Webber’s show would teach you that any risky sexual behaviour involved not her lawful husband but all those radio producers on her way to the top; Lloyd’s production keeps her dancing for our pleasure in that little leather bra and pants. It’s all great showbiz. But who is making a fool out of whom?