Saint or sinner? Patriot or politician? Paragon or pariah? History still can’t decide whether Eva Peron was an imitation or the real thing. But a few basic facts, no one argues about.
Eva Peron or “Evita,” as she liked people to call her (“Little Eve” in English), hit Buenos Aires like a meteor shower for 10 tumultuous years in the 1940’s. She skyrocketed from poverty to power by leveraging sex. She married, swinging elections to win the presidency for her husband, Juan Peron. She instituted reforms, among them the right of women to vote.
How a woman of such humble beginnings rose so high to do so much for so many, that is what this amazing biography in song, dance and drama is all about. Her pride and humility, passions and prejudices, contradictions in personality, her mystique, that is the focal point.
The musical is “Evita,” lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The production company is Village Theatre; Steve Tomkins and Brian Yorkey directing, Steve Tomkins choreographing and R.J. Tancioco directing and conducting the music. It’s fiery, raw, anything but rational.
A charismatic Jennifer Paz picks up the title role at a point in Evita’s life where she was a 15 year old waif standing alone and on her own, suitcase in hand, and even then, wrapping a worldly wise and jaded guitarist around her little finger.
From there on, it is all Paz, but Paz and her torrid love affair with Argentina; an Argentina being torn apart by the military who plotted against Evita, the elite who despised her and the masses who adored her. Paz seduces and induces, charms and disarms, rallies her supporters and shames her adversaries. But always she shines and in the end, so overwhelms you that you cannot distinguish between the actress and the character. The merge is complete.
There isn’t documentation enough to say Che the character derives from Che Guevara, the South American revolutionary. But Dane Stockinger as Che certainly does insert the fierce threat of anger and defiance that you would expect from a lawless guerilla fighter.
Troy Wagerman’s Magaladi is all macho on the outside and all milquetoast on the inside, which is pretty much the way that kind of chauvinism usually goes.
And all around and everywhere, public life and private life pulsate to a dominating Latin beat set in the stylized dance of cha cha, mambo, samba, flamenco and, of course, the tango. Energy, physicality and separate and distinct body movements, they are all Village trademarks, present and accounted for — but never predictable and always a wonder to behold.
Swing and the melodies and lyrics of swing, echo the sounds and sentiments of the world war years during those turbulent times. A sense of imminent danger seems always to be threatening.
Village is on its way if they’re not already there this season. We are still taking oxygen. This “Evita” took our breath away.
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