Evita at Leeds Grand Theatre

Evita UK Tour - Marti Pellow as Che and Madalena Alberto as Eva 2 - credit Keith Pattison

Louise Ware and a friend went to see Evita at Leeds Grand Theatre. One of them had seen Marti Pellow before … she doesn’t mention which one …

Send two Andrew Lloyd Webber fans to Evita and they will love it or hate it, and as one of us couldn’t get through the movie…..we weren’t going to be a push over’s.

Luckily, Madalena Alberto (Evita) stole the show. She delivered a performance showing the powerful and vulnerable Evita. Apart from being a superb singer and incredibly graceful, her passion for the part had your eyes glued to her, hanging off every word.

Mark Heenehan (Peron) was the perfect supporting actor, holding his own with a powerful performance without outshining the star.

One of us had seen Marti Pellow before in his Wet Wet Wet days. He showed the perfect balance between cheeky yet serious. The standing ovation left him beaming. He seemed to love the performance as much as the audience.

A brave little girl performed a moving ode to Eva. We couldn’t imagine being brave enough to do that at such a young age.

The orchestra got better and better as the show went on, ending with fabulous energetic conducting that was a joy to watch and listen to.

The 2 hours flew by and we could have stayed there longer. A fabulous show delivered by a very small cast. Go see it.

3 comments

  1. Went to see Evita on 14th May at Leeds Grande theatre. We entered the theatre with much excitement, the orchestra started and the theatres audience went quiet. The orchestra were fabulous, wish I could say the same for the show. I’m just glad I saw the movie so I knew they storyline. And I wasn’t the only one, I was with a party of 20 people, and most were very disappointed with the show, they found it very confusing, and sometimes couldn’t hear what che (marti pellow) was singing or saying.

    The first half to me is chaotic and all over the place, I found the vocal of Madalena Alberta to be high pitch and not really suiting the role, and didn’t feel any real emotion from her performance apart from the epic ‘don’t cry for me Argentina’ she gave heart and soul for this most famous anthem for Evita.

    All in all the end couldn’t come quick enough. 5 out of 10

  2. I travelled to Leeds to see this show especially as i had been unable to be in the audience when it was on in Newcastle earlier in the year and was aware that audiences there absolutely adored it. The whole show sparkled from start to finish with outstanding levels of energy from the whole cast. Of course Marti Pellow did brilliantly in a role that is well suited to his cheeky style and fabulous voice. Madalena Alberto made the part of Eva her own, but somehow added an energy to the character that made it wholly believable. Peron played by the inimitable Mark Heehnan was just incredible. But the backbone of this show lies in the ensemble who changed costumes so many times that it looked like the cast was about 150 when in fact in was less than 40. well worth every penny and every second of the train journey there and back in the same day. If you get the chance to see this tour you will not regret it.

Comments are closed.