Evita — Page 4

While Evita the movie was really only a moderate commercial success, a LOT, if not most, of my non theatre friends associate it with Madonna--so as others said, I think the Petti connection is much more with certain Broadway people, not the general population (by any means--Patti who?)

Castle, thanks for your reply. I actually agree with you, although I think I do like the movie more than you overall, I do think Parker had a hard time choosing between how to present it. I guess I just saw your comment about it being an abortion as too harsh--to me that means an utter disaster. Stone would have been a worse choice I suspect (though maybe he'd surprise me)--as would the rumours back in the day of Ken Russell (although it probably would have been entertaining to watch).

I do find the concept album to be probably the most exciting of the recordings overall (RippedMan I believe it was just recently remastered so you can easily buy it ), but a lot of it wouldn;'t work IMHO on stage. The Lady Has Potential (even with the insecticide stuff removed as it was for the film) would be I suspect a very hard song to make work on stage.

That said, I think Kay's orchestrations work better in a theatrical context (and Larry Fuller used many of his added rhythms to do some great choreography which often doesn';t get the credit it should). The concept album is much more like Jesus Christ Superstar, which I still think has never fully successfully worked on stage--Prince was smart to insist on the changes he did before he would direct it.

I don't mean to discredit the London cast at all, I think they're all fine performers--and I think it's a bit unfair that many people sorta forget even that Evita was a success in London with that cast first--just for some reason I find the recording itself lacks energy and is disappointing. Maybe it was recorded too early? Speaking of, did Prince and crew make any significant changes between London and the LA/NYC production? I guess I always think of the major changes made to Sunset Blvd between London and LA, buit I suppose it wasn't really the same situation.

Goo dto know that it's been significantly changed from London. re-Imagined usually means a new concept, right? But I take it in this case it isn't...

^ It is certainly becoming more common, but I too was surprised by the number of glowing screens in the images from last night's bow. That's not typical.

Last night the media was there to photograph the curtain call so that's why you say probably 40 different flash bulbs going off at once- there were probably some audience members who joined in but that was mostly the press.

Eric- back to your coments on the London cast recording; I don't think it was really ever made readily available in the US and Canada and because the American cast recording came fairly fast on its heels and was so much more complete, few felt the need to track down the London disc.

The production didn't undergo major changes from London to New York but the tempos in London were much slower than what was heard on Broadway.

Updated On: 3/13/12 at 10:55 PM

I had the London recording, a one disc highlights. Paige disappointed slightly, only in comparison to Covington (the recurring motif in this thread). As noted, it seemed slowed down, and too staid and formal to those of us expecting a rock-infused sound. As for Paige, I was already a fan, having seen her in BILLY with Michael Crawford.

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discmen it is a matter of opiion. I love the show Evita and yet could not force myself to sit through The movie in it's entirety. Madonna destroyed the thing for me. Her bad acting and the score being made easier so her moderate singing ability could handle it.

I know they had to drop some of Evita's bitchiness in order to get the Argentine Government to allow them to film there. But the softening of Eva disturbed be as well.

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While not amazing, I have no real issue with Madonna in the film. I always thought she did fine partly because she DOES seem capable of acting in her music videos--oddly. Speaking of, apparently David Fincher who largely made his name making some of her best music videos is a huge fan of musicals, has always wanted to make one, and was trying to be considered for Evita. Some have said the reason he won't work with Madonna anymore, is he was disappointed she didn't fight for him (if there's ANY truth there, I assume part of the reason is when the film would have gone into pre-production Fincher wasn't really an established name director).

Re the London cast album, the tempi ARE slowed down. I wonder if that's how they were played in the theatre, if they were sped up later, or what--that does add to the lack of energy. I do particularly like David Essex on it though (I guess he left the London run early on to be replaced by Gary Bond).

Eric, there are a couple of 'live' recordings of the original London production floating around out there. Have you ever heard any of them? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it; but yes, it appears the tempos were that slow in the theatre. The tempos in this new revival are slower than the Broadway original as well, so I'm assuming this is how Webber prefers it played.

Her accent is still thick, but I think outside of some of the passages that are difficult to understand regardless of who is singing (the afore mentioned passages in "Good Night and Thank You" for example) its much better than it was in London; though I think it wouldn't hurt for them to continue to work with her on it; American audiences are less forgiving of such things. Ricky Martin has a surprisingly thick accent not when he sings but when he speaks (and he speaks a lot in EVITA) and I actually found him more difficult to understand.

I remember the critics loving it, and being a bit surprised it didn't run at least two years, myself but I have even less success at predicting what will run in the West End than Broadway, so...

I've heard an audio of Elena's really stunning performance in the Donmar Passion (although that production, as Sondheim rightfully said, really seems to belong to Giorgio more than any other). Her diction did sound better than Evita's cast album, but she did have some questionable bits...

Speaking of accents--it makes sense for this production to largely use accents since the two stars have them anyway, even though I tend to subscribe to the belief of not using them when someone in a film or play is *meant* to be speaking their own language and we just hear it as English. But I know people go back and forth on that.

However, there have been two tours in North America in the past 15 or so years. I saw the more recent one (I think it was around 2003) and while the performances were not all brilliant, I found it thrilling to see the original production as restaged by Prince and Fuller together. However the earlier 20th Anniversary tour, which I did not see, but was apparently based on the original Prince staging with the original designs (though I believe he was too busy to do more than attend some rehearsals). At any rate, it stared Natalie Torro and Raul Esparza and according to Wiki and some other sites tried to place more emphasis on "latin themes", hence the casting. I wonder if anyone saw it and knows if they did accents?

MB,m I don't have any live recordings of the London production though I'd love to hear them--I've seen a few of the clips that they showed recently on that BBC West End Musicals special, and I believe the same footage has been on various ALW docus, but that's it. I have seen the easy to find footage of the Broadway production, and I think the tempos were similar to the American album, though I know ever since the days of Godard Lieberson's great cast albums that the tempo of tracks is often sped up.

In the notes Sondheim made about the WSS cast recording and sent to Bernstein who couldn't attend the sessions, which are published in full in that recent book, Sondheim mentions that Bernstein will not approve of Lieberson's decision to often take the instrumental bits especially sometimes at close to double their stage time, his reasoning being without the visuals, you have to keep the music more exciting. But I guess Evita didn't reflect that.

While I largely agree with the complaints of the movie, as I said I do overall enjoy it--I wonder if this production will lead to a decent BluRay release finally.

And yes, SFFrontrow, the concept album was very very much more in the JCS mode.

Cerveris is also doing an accent. The only one in the cast who at this point is not is the Mistress who has a gorgeous voice but seems a little All American.

i was there tonight... Overall i feel like its clear that its 2nd preview!!! I think it will get FAR better with time and timing :)

EVITA 15th Anniversary Blu-ray in the Works

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