Evita, Palladium review: Rachel Zegler isn’t the problem

Evita, Palladium review and star rating: ★★★

Whole PHDs could be written about the publicity campaign for Jamie Lloyd’s Evita. Hundreds of people are gathering outside the Palladium every night to watch Rachel Zegler belt ‘Don’t Cry for me Argentina’ from the theatre balcony for free, a fun PR stunt that is getting so popular it risks being shut down by the police, while the ticketholders, some paying upwards of £245 per seat, have to settle for watching the performance via video link.

And on opening night, Keanu Reeves, Jessica Alba and Pedro Pascal were some of the A-Listers sat metres from me who gave multiple standing ovations in the first act – not at the end, but half an hour into the show. It’s common to see British acting titans at West End opening nights, but this random collection of A-Listers who aren’t particularly known for theatre showed how far beyond the West End landscape this production has travelled.

How come? It’s from Jamie Lloyd, the zeitgeisty producer behind 2023’s Sunset Boulevard, the man who is basically reinventing what West End shows can look like, so anything he does generates buzz. It also stars Rachel Zegler, who was most famously racially abused for playing Snow White. Lloyd uses live video effects and radical aesthetics (think the lighting and set design from a Wembley Arena pop show) to make the point that theatre can be bigger, louder and more ambitious. But where Sunset Boulevard was more of a gentle character study, Evita is primarily a series of phenomenal ensemble numbers. Ultimately it feels more like a music concert than conventional piece of theatrical storytelling.

Evita: Palladium musical offers new thinking about what a musical can look like

As for Zegler, with the straying of an eye or the tilt of her head, she finds depth in the Argentinian leader’s story, finding confidence and vulnerability in the tragic figure. Evita is inspired by the real-life story of Eva Perón, a working class Argentinian who married president Juan Peron and died of cervical cancer aged 33. She is viewed as a contradictory figure because she helped establish workers’ rights and paid leave, but became an early Champagne socialist; for some, her love for Christian Dior dresses and the finer things in life felt at odds with her stance about equality.

The show runs at three hours but feels half that because it is stuffed with utterly incredible choreography and the litany of musical numbers, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s difficult to imagine that anything this stimulating has ever played in the West End before. There are some particularly gorgeous pieces of lighting design by Jon Clark; one bit that sticks in the memory is the illuminated faces of dozens of repressed workers peering through tiers of staging like ghostly apparitions.

And yet, I wasn’t alone in finding Evita hard work. The outdated script introduces a range of historical characters without really putting them into context, or explaining their roles properly. The cast needs more space to tell the story with visual cues, but with barely any spoken lines – everything is delivered in verse as a rock opera – the show is hard to follow for people who don’t know the story well. It’s endless energy and high-octane choreo with very little time to actually sit with the characters and their feelings.

By the interval, other journalists admitted to me they were finding the show hard to follow. It doesn’t help that the production’s music overpowers the lyrics. Rachel Zegler’s diction in particular becomes difficult to understand when she sings, and it’s the same for the ensemble numbers: too often it’s really difficult to catch what they’re saying.

It raises whole questions about accessibility, and the amount of knowledge audiences should come into shows with. Some critics will say cult musicals are designed for die-hard fans, but I tend to veer towards thinking productions should be able to be understood by newcomers. While Jamie Lloyd’s Evita offers plenty of fresh thinking on the scope of the production values that are possible in these cranky, hundred-year-old theatres, I can’t help but feel disappointed that so much of it went over my head.

Evita plays at the London Palladium until 6 September