Evita in October--Poor Choice? (With Bonus Guys and Dolls Content!)

                 It's usually Broadway Tuesday, but there's not much Broadway to go around right now.  I've been listening to some cast recordings I'd forgotten I owned lately.  With the recent discussion about Evita and especially the scenes around the Casa Rosada balcony, I pulled out the film recording from 1996.  I remember seeing the movie with my sister while visiting her at college, and acquiring the cds a few weeks later.  I had been listening to the original Broadway cast recording on cassette (You kids get off my lawn!) for quite some time by then.  I had it memorized, so every time the movie cut or altered a line, I noticed.  I bitterly noticed.  I'm the kind of obsessive that listens to an album over and over and over, especially back then, when cds were expensive and I only got a handful a year.  I also raided the library and listened to anything that sounded even vaguely interesting.

                I've spent a lot of time listening to cast recordings through the years, and one of the odd things I do sometimes is collect multiples of the same show and compare casts and orchestrations.  It's pretty much the nerdiest thing someone can do.  Example:  The 1990s revival of Guys and Dolls is lush and wonderful, and the original 1940s version is fantastic as well, but my favorite is the 1970s cast recording, from an all-African American cast that includes Ken Page.  It was produced by Motown.  It's magnificent, with added orchestrations to give it the 1970s feel.  Ken Page singing "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" is life altering, and every other performance on that album is spot on perfection.  "More I Cannot Wish You" will inspire tears, even on your fiftieth listening.  This album has been my companion for over twenty years, and I still love it.

                Back to Evita.   It is not a good idea to deep dive into a rock opera about the wife of a dictator the month before a contentious election, but here we are.  Is it uncomfortable to listen to passages like, "We have ways of making you vote for us, or at least of making you abstain!"?  Totally.  Painfully.  Is one of the problems of the show, and by extension the movie, that they show some horrible behavior of both Eva and Juan, but then expect you to cry for her death at the end (not a spoiler)?  One of the first things she does upon arriving as Juan's new mistress is to remove the fourteen-year-old who had held the position before.  Later, as they attempt to take over the country, he muses, "How annoying that we have to fight elections for our cause.  The inconvenience, having to get a majority.  If normal methods of persuasion fail to win us applause, there are other ways of establishing authority."  The movie tried to soften this one by transferring the lines to the narrator, but they stayed, illustrating the murkiness in all of this.  The movie also cut out some of the reference to the Perons hiding money from Eva's foundation in a Swiss bank account, but that was in there, too.  They made no secret of the spending spree to outfit the formerly destitute Eva in mountains of high fashion, including thousands in couture for the Rainbow Tour.  Ultimately, Evita is the story of a girl with nothing who wanted everything and stopped at nothing to get it.  It's also the story of someone who turned charisma into power, and who gave enough back to the poor to become a hero.  There was no doubt she was charming and that she worked hard, but everything else is up for discussion.  At the best, she was the humanitarian face of a dictatorial regime that did do some good things for the workers.  At the worst, she was the dictatorial regime, running her husband from the sidelines.  He fell from power a few years after her death, then spent almost twenty years in exile before returning to power again. 

                The movie is gorgeous.  Alan Parker and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, and costume designer, Penny Rose, do an unbelievable job.  This thing is just as good on mute as it is with sound, not because the singing is bad, but because the design and direction is just that incredible.  Penny Rose was allowed access to Eva's wardrobe for research, and the costumes are spot on.  It's also fun to play spot-that-baby, as Madonna was pregnant throughout filming, and they manage to make it less obvious through use of creative costuming and careful shooting.  For those of us in the know, though, it can totally be spotted, especially in the dancing in "Buenos Aries," which was clearly shot in stages.  The last bits of the movie were shot when they were finally allowed access to the Casa Rosada, so glancing views of Lourdes are easily available there.  Awesome.

                Again.  It's ooky this week, but it's still a good piece of art that is very conflicted.  Bonus points if you put it on mute and play the Broadway cast recording.  It doesn't always line up, but it's damn good.   Sing it, Patti.