If you’ve heard anything about the City Center Encores! gala production of Evita, it was surely about director Sammi Cannold’s decision to cast two actresses in the title role: Maia Reficco, who plays Young Eva, and Solea Pfeiffer as Eva. So does the split work? To quote Act 2’s absurdly catchy “Rainbow Tour”: The answer is… a qualified yes.
When the ambitious Eva hitched her wagon to the marginally talented tango singer Magaldi (a wonderfully oily Philip Hernández), she was young. He was more than twice her age. And watching that 15-year-old girl burst wide-eyed onto the bustling streets of Buenos Aires—where she’s groped, manhandled, and passed from one greaseball to the next—we get a glimpse of what teenage Eva Duarte must have gone through before she met and married Juan Perón (Enrique Acevedo) and became Argentina’s most loved, loathed, and legendary first lady. It also helps to have a second Eva for the late-show “Montage”; that way the cancer-ridden Eva can observe from her hospital bed, truly watching her life flash before her eyes. But Reficco—the 19-year-old Boston-born, Buenos Aires–raised star of a Nickelodeon Latin show—gets pummeled by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s unrelenting high notes; and if you don’t know Evita word for word (some of us do, even 29 years after my junior-year production, thank you Gabriel Richard High School), you’ll miss a fair number of lyrics in “Eva, Beware of the City”—and it’s a shame to miss any of Tim Rice’s tasty morsels, such as “I already know what cooks/ How the dirty city feels and looks/ I tasted it last night, didn’t I?”
Fortunately Pfeiffer—as the slightly older and much wiser Eva—busts in just in time to belt out the last verse of “Buenos Aires,” and it’s immediately clear that her promise of “just a little touch of star quality” is a massive understatement. Last seen at City Center in Encores! Off-Center’s summer 2018 Songs for a New World, Pfeiffer, fresh from the premiere of the Almost Famous musical at the Old Globe (she played Penny Lane), is a revelation; somehow, she gets better and better as the show goes on—even more impressive considering that her gorgeous “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” comes basically at the halfway point.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★ review here.]
Cannold’s staging is stuffed with fascinating details. Notice how Eva gradually moves higher and higher during “A New Argentina,” from the floor to a rolling staircase to, eventually, the top of the stairs—indicating her rise to fame alongside Perón’s ascent to power. Young Eva appears again in “Another Suitcase in Another Hall”; when Eva gives Perón’s mistress (Maria Cristina Slye) the door, she can’t help but see herself in the slip-clad girl. How many times must Eva have been unceremoniously kicked out by women just like her? Che (Jason Gotay), the story’s narrator, is portrayed not as the communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, but rather as simply an Everyman; now, he’s more of a Greek chorus, a commenter, and perhaps even the voice of Eva’s conscience. And at the beginning, during Evita’s funeral, mourners gather beneath the famous “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” sparkling-white ballgown—a chiffon-covered cenotaph to a woman her critics believed was just an empty dress.
Cannold has also added in “You Must Love Me”—the Oscar-winning song from 1996’s big-screen Evita adaptation starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas—right before “Eva’s Final Broadcast,” and it works beautifully. (If only that darn nurse had stopped pushing Eva’s wheelchair in circles so Pfeiffer could sing two words in the same spot!) Hardcore Evita fans also might notice a couple extra verses in the “Lament,” including this one: “The choice was mine and no one else’s/ I could have the millions at my feet/ Give my life to people I might never meet/ Or else to children of my own.” They’re not new, of course, but they can be found on the 1976 Evita concept album featuring Julie Covington.
About a year and a half before his death at age 91, the 21-time Tony Award–winning director Harold Prince pronounced Evita “close to perfect.” He was speaking to a Singapore news outlet on the occasion of a revival, which he was directing. Of course, he was referring to his production; the 1979 Broadway premiere won seven Tonys and rocketed Patti LuPone to fame in the title role. But I’d apply that superlative to the show itself—it’s definitely the best Lloyd Webber–Rice collaboration, and even Lloyd Webber’s best musical. (There, I said it.) And, as the 2012 Broadway revival proved, it’s not easy to do this well. Don’t keep your distance!
Evita opened Nov. 14, 2019, and runs through Nov. 24 at City Center. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
