“If they throw a baby at you, don’t catch it!”
We were sitting in the bar of The Grand Theatre having a glass of wine and a chat before “Evita”. I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never seen the musical before. I didn’t know anything about Argentinian history. I’ve not even seen the film. But my friend was a big fan of the show, and she’d spent a few months in Argentina not long ago. She was relating the advice she’d been given when travelling around Buenos Aires.
“Evita” is set in a country where the muggers fire infants at unsuspecting foreigners… I was going to love it!
Sadly my friend’s story was the highlight of the evening.
The performances were good, the songs singalongable, and the dancing terrific. But the story? I didn’t get it. It didn’t grab me.
The story was all bathwater and no baby.
For a start I did not realise that the main guy was beret-wearing, mass-murdering, t-shirt inspiring homophobe Ernesto “Che” Guevara. I should have guessed from the fact that he wore a beret. And a costume from the Army and Navy store. And obviously he was Argentinian, so all the clues were there.
I am a little slow on the uptake sometimes.
I just hadn’t ever associated the bastard Guevara with musical theatre. Not in a million years.
Che wasn’t a big fan of musicals, if you know what I mean.
There are some really good bits in Evita, don’t get me wrong. I loved the scene where Peron takes out his generals one by one by tying a bag over their heads making them disappeared. It reminded me of the bit in The Untouchables where De Niro teaches a Chicago Justice the meaning of teamwork with a baseball bat. And there are some good lines. My favourite is the comment of the old sailor when Evita gets mad during her trip to Europe at the local press calling her a “whore”; “They used to call me an Admiral, but I haven’t been on a ship in years”.
But, all in all, “Evita” just wasn’t for me.
I am in a minority. A tiny minority judging by the packed theatre and the standing ovations. A minority of one, or maybe two (you know who you are.)
Sitting next to me in Row I was an older lady and her daughter. They’d come to see Evita as a birthday treat for both of them. We got talking in the interval and I asked her what she thought. I said I wasn’t keen.
“Bloody brilliant,” she said, “It’s so bloody brilliant. You’re wrong… We’re loving it!”
I told her she was probably right. And that she should be doing the review, not me.
She declined but said again that I was wrong, very wrong, so wrong I ought to have my press tickets confiscated. I must give Evita a good review. The review it deserved.
I promised I would.
“Evita is brilliant! Bloody brilliant!”