Evita

Early in this show, a tenor sings a song titled “On this night of a thousand stars”. Not even this lovely old theatre can boast the ability to accommodate so many on its stage and this company, excellent though it is, quite so many members. Nevertheless, all involved in this powerful production could rightly aspire to some degree of stardom. For one thing, they had safely negotiated some fairly stringent rules and necessary precautions concerning rehearsals during a pandemic. As part of that plan, they had selected two separate teams to perform the leading roles but the demands made by the sometimes difficult score on principals faced with the prospect of 12 performances would in any event have made this a sensible move.   

Those appearing on the night I saw the production were led by Alexa Chaplin, a commanding presence in the title role. She is an experienced performer and tackled this extremely demanding part with apparent ease.  The same is true of John Hall and his clear diction combined with a rich singing voice resulted in a memorable performance.              Dale Vaughan, in his first production with this company, handled the part of Che with great confidence; this is another substantial part, effectively the narrator, charged with the task of asking the audience to decide whether Eva is quite the saviour or saint she claims.         Fiona Phillips, in the small but important part of the nameless mistress, gave a good performance of the song “Another suitcase” as did David Copley-Martin, another newcomer, as Magaldi, the tenor with the song mentioned above.

Supporting them was an ensemble of 33 and an orchestra of 11, the latter fully occupied in what is, of course, a sung-through piece of musical theatre. They combined to give an extremely good sound whilst those on stage coped very well with some stylised moves set to difficult rhythms. The Argentine tango has become more familiar to many of us through a certain television show but we were treated to a good example of this by Tom Menarry and Melanie Groom, both making their first appearances with this company.  Indeed, many of the cast were newcomers, some of whom were “graduates” of the Youth section, which had been formed a few years ago by this show’s Musical Director and the actor playing ‘Peron’ in this performance.  I am sure that the need to grow members for the main society was one of their objectives and they would have been delighted to see their efforts come to fruition. There are some difficult harmonies and entries in this show but the company handled them all with ease. 

I think I can borrow some of Tim Rice’s song titles with which to summarise. Potential problems imposed by the pandemic, the composer and, dare I say, the Director with the sometimes unusual yet very effective moves were all overcome (“the art of the possible”). Audiences have, I think, been good and so, hopefully, “the money kept rolling in”. The cast could say it was all “surprisingly good for you” but another production of this standard from this company came as no surprise.  It was a “Good night and thank you”.     

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