Evita is a sung-through musical that dramatises the rise of Argentinian First Lady Eva Perón. This 2025 West End revival at the London Palladium feels equal parts rock concert and political rally. Director Jamie Lloyd, never shy of provocation, has pared the 1978 Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice classic to its bones and then wrapped those bones in neon, video screens and the roar of a live band that would not feel out of place at Glastonbury. A giant scaffold dominates the stage, E V I T A blazing in lightbulb letters, inviting you to join the cult before the first chord is struck.
The story follows Eva Duarte, a poor teenager who flees her provincial town for Buenos Aires and discovers that ambition can be as seductive as any tango. She charms radio audiences, then latches onto rising army colonel Juan Perón and helps propel him to the presidency. In return she claims the balcony, the crowds and the adoration of Argentina’s working class who chant her name with football terrace fervour. A sardonic narrator guides you through the glamour and grime, reminding you at every turn that sainthood often comes with a price tag.
Rachel Zegler’s West End debut as Eva is a star-is-born moment. She glides on stage in a secondhand frock and sells Buenos Aires with such vocal sparkle that the audience cheers before the final chord lands. Later she anchors Don’t Cry for Me Argentina from the real Palladium balcony, singing to the street crowd below while the audiences watches on live feed. It is a theatrical sleight of hand that merges fiction and reality and leaves the house buzzing as though we have witnessed living history. One minute Zegler flashes a movie-star grin, the next she whips off her platinum wig to reveal a frail young woman crushed by the weight of her own myth.
James Olivas matches her charisma as Juan Perón. Their duet I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You sizzles with the chemistry of two chess players flirting over the board. Diego Andrés Rodriguez is a live wire narrator, part punk frontman, part Greek chorus; he spits Rice’s lyrics like shards of glass, occasionally lost under the wall of sound but always riveting. Bella Brown, as the Perón mistress evicted from the palace, turns Another Suitcase in Another Hall into something so quietly devastating you can hear the audience exhale in unison.
Soutra Gilmour’s set involves a single tiered scaffold, which becomes nightclub, military barracks and presidential palace through Jon Clark’s lighting which shifts from sulphur street lamps to blinding photo flash in seconds. Fabian Aloise’s choreography fuses tango footwork with pounding street dance so the stage feels alive with restless populism. During And the Money Keeps Rolling In the ensemble stamp and clap with such ferocity that the seating banks vibrate beneath you. Adam Fisher’s sound design is occasionally too muscular, burying a lyric here and there, but the payoff is a visceral thrum that turns musical theatre into arena spectacle.
This revival does not simply mount a classic; it interrogates it under a blazing spotlight and challenges you to look away. Good luck with that.
