Evita the Musical

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Previewed 2 June 2006, opened 21 June 2006, closed 26 May 2007 at the Adelphi Theatre in London

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's legendary musical Evita returns to London's West End in a new, vibrant and colourful production.

"I have fallen head over heels for Evita again... Michael Grandage's dynamic production"
The London Evening Standard

Evita is the story of Eva Peron, the second and most famous wife of the Argentine dicator Juan Peron. She was born Maria Eva Duarte on 17 May 1919 in Los Toldos, a village 150 miles west of Buenos Aires. She was youngest of five illegitimate children. Her childhood was unremarkable, her family ordinary. She died Eva maria Duarte de Peron, the First ladt of Argentina, on 26 July 1952. She had become the most powerful and famous woman Latin America had ever seen and she was mourned by millions - she won international acclaim and adoration from her own people as a champion of the poor, whilst glamour, power and greed made her the world's first major political celebrity.

Elena Roger plays the role of 'Eva Peron', Philip Quast plays 'Juan Peron' and Matt Rawle plays 'Che' with Abbie Osmon as the Alternate 'Eva Peron'. Abbie Osmon is expected to play 'Eva' on Monday evenings and Thursday matinees. (Please Note: All casting is subject to change).

"This is a first rate Evita" The Daily Mail

Elena Roger was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974 and grew up in the Baracas district. She is a popular musical theatre actress in Argentina, having played roles in Les Miserables and Saturday Night Fever. Regarding playing the role Eva Peron in this first major London revival of Evita the Musical, she says that: "For my grandfather's family, living in the south, Peron did a lot: they were able to buy their house with a government loan and to buy toys at Christmas. For my mother's family, socialists living in the city, I am not sure about what they thought of him. Nothing is black and white, there are always two opinions and we talk about both at home: the same with Eva, wonderful in some ways, not so good in others. I want to express that complexity when I play this role."

"This Evita is set to dazzle... a brilliant rediscovery of a show" The Daily Express

Evita the Musical was originally seen in London at The Prince Edward Theatre in 1978 where is played for just over eight years. Tim Rice on the background of writing Evita the Musical: "Not all of the many fantastic stories told about Eva Peron are true; but any of them could be true - she was an extraordinary woman. Anyone writing about her has no need to exaggerate in order to give his work a little colour; the most straightforward account of her short life will contain enough material to raise the most sophisticated of eyebrows. That is why we chose her as the subject of an opera which we began writing in early 1974... When I heard the last ten minutes of a program about Eva Peron on my car radio one evening late in 1973, I was not immediately struck by the idea that here was the perfect story for Andrew and me, but I was sufficiently intrigued by what I had heard to make a point of listening to a repeat of the programme a few days later. My previous knowledge of Eva Peron was negligible. I knew that she had appeared on many Argentine stamps when I was at school, that she was good-looking and she was dead. By the time I had heard the whole of the programme about her, I was hooked on the story of her life. Not, I hasten to add, on her philosophy or her morals."

"A socking great star performance from Elena Roger - Evita is going to be a huge and durable hit all over again" The Daily Telegraph

"Michael Grandage's terrific, atmospheric production of Evita is superbly staged on Christopher Oram's stuccoed palazzos and wrought-iron balconies of Buenos Aires in the 1950s... Don't Cry For Me Argentina, in which Eva bids farewell to her people, is as potent as ever. Evita's triumph is that you believe she loved the people as ferociously as they worshipped her. A sensational hit, all over again." The Mail on Sunday

"Oh, what a show! - Elena Roger is simply sensational" The Independent

"Michael Grandage's rapid, dusky, rough-tongued production is a revelation... Lloyd Webber's re-orchestrated music, by turn swooning and brassy but always terminally catching, transmits her glamour, ruthlessness and ersatz emotion... Rice's lyrics are wonderfully spicy and precise... and Christopher Oram's beautiful and grandiloquent design - with its high mud-coloured walls and arches, wide balconies and long glass doors patterned with wrought iron - creates a vast echo chamber for empty promises." The Observer

"There is something strangely tentative about Michael Grandage's fitfully brilliant revival of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1978 collaborative swan song... Only Paule Constable's superb lighting and Rob Ashford's electrifying choreography hit the spot... The evening belongs to the tiny but big-lunged Argentinian Elena Roger, who zooms through with more than 'just a little touch of star quality'. Misgivings about the production, then, but the work itself must surely now be regarded as a masterpiece of British 20th-century musical theatre." The Sunday Times