Word: evita
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...lyric-based summary resembled Director Harold Prince's production in relying on superficial descriptions of major events. But Prince's technique ideally suits his purposes. As Eva Person manipulated the media and her people, so too does Evita direct the audience's attention from one newsworthy scene to another. Prince suspends a large screen above the stage onto which he projects news-reels and still photographs of Eva's activities: meetings with the Pope, France, and Argentinian peasants. The Life magazine technique creates excitement which allows the audience to observe the real Evita's magnetism and beauty while an equally...
LIKE PRINCE'S adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, Evita relies upon an operatic chorus and contains little dialogue, placing a great burden on the voices of its stars. Derin Altay, who replaced Patti LuPone on Broadway, sings vibrantly. Waving her arms, confidently striding across the stage, she demands the audience's attention. She also displays a not-too-subtle wit, fashioning gestures more reminiscent of a Billy Martin-Reggie Jackson ballpark feud than an exchange between a First Lady and a cabinet official. But of course much of Eva's mystique results from such apparent contradictions--the earthiness...
Alton's Peron is a Machiavellian, if occasionally befuddled, politician. And R. Michael Baker's Che stands as a deserving counter-Force to Alstay's Evita. He's on stage almost throughout the show, jumping, running, kneeling--seldom content to stand silently as Evita becomes increasingly popular and disingenuous...
Like the recent television docudrama based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Evita presents itself as newsreel-supported fact, leading to an occasional gap in credibility. While it seems reasonable to expect audiences to understand that some of Evita is fiction, for instance, the revolutionary narrator is superfluously identified as Che Guevara. As the program notes. "Che and Evita never met... when she was at the pinnacle of Argentine politics. Che was a student in medical school." Characters never even refer to Che by name. "I don't know why they didn't just call him Juan, or Roberto," Baker...
Other lyrics evoke laughter of a different nature, "Screw the middle classes!" Evita demands. Sometime thereafter, she sings, "Don't Cry For Me Argentina," whose introduction contains the cliche-ridden lyric. "You wouldn't believe it/ Coming from a girl you once knew/ Although she dressed up to the nines/ At sixes and sevens with you." An otherwise wonderful "High Flying Adored" includes this unusual rhyme; "I'm their savior. That's a what they call me/ So Lauren Bacall me." Fortunately, though, the last lyrics are overshadowed by stage action as Evita rushes back and forth, gradually transforming herself...