Edinburgh Playhouse
3 stars
One thing Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s finest couple of hours has going for it more than thirty years after its debut as a concept album is its dignity and grace. This despite being an extended apology for a couple so power-hungry and in love with the spotlight it would make the combined vulgarity of Posh, Becks, Tony and Cherie look understated. Fortunately this sketchbook rags to riches homage to President’s moll Eva Peron has at least half a dozen cracking songs which skirt the bombast of Lloyd Webber’s later and more ridiculous post-Rice canon.
Bob Tomson and Bill Kenwright’s touring revival looks magnificently quaint, all stately pillars and not a pyrotechnic in sight. Matthew Wright’s choreography is bright without being overtly brash, and Louise Dearman in the title role is the latest in a long line of Rice and Lloyd Webber’s charmingly earnest cut-glass leading ladies. While it’s clear that today such a back-street little madam as Eva would end up as a Heat-seeking WAG, the device of having Che Guevara as narrator remains inspired, and may point to the authors hitherto undiscovered hip rebel past. A shame, then, that Seamus Cullen makes such a wet revolutionary.
Beyond the steely tango of I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You, every mistress’s anthem, Another Suitcase In Another Hall, and Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, Rice and Lloyd Webber were actually recycling melodies first aired during a brief flirtation with pop a decade earlier when Rice was an EMI staffer. It’s a shame You Must Love Me, penned especially for the big-screen version, isn’t as memorable in an otherwise evergreen piece of epic hagiography.
The Herald, June 11th 2008
ends
.
3 stars
One thing Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s finest couple of hours has going for it more than thirty years after its debut as a concept album is its dignity and grace. This despite being an extended apology for a couple so power-hungry and in love with the spotlight it would make the combined vulgarity of Posh, Becks, Tony and Cherie look understated. Fortunately this sketchbook rags to riches homage to President’s moll Eva Peron has at least half a dozen cracking songs which skirt the bombast of Lloyd Webber’s later and more ridiculous post-Rice canon.
Bob Tomson and Bill Kenwright’s touring revival looks magnificently quaint, all stately pillars and not a pyrotechnic in sight. Matthew Wright’s choreography is bright without being overtly brash, and Louise Dearman in the title role is the latest in a long line of Rice and Lloyd Webber’s charmingly earnest cut-glass leading ladies. While it’s clear that today such a back-street little madam as Eva would end up as a Heat-seeking WAG, the device of having Che Guevara as narrator remains inspired, and may point to the authors hitherto undiscovered hip rebel past. A shame, then, that Seamus Cullen makes such a wet revolutionary.
Beyond the steely tango of I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You, every mistress’s anthem, Another Suitcase In Another Hall, and Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, Rice and Lloyd Webber were actually recycling melodies first aired during a brief flirtation with pop a decade earlier when Rice was an EMI staffer. It’s a shame You Must Love Me, penned especially for the big-screen version, isn’t as memorable in an otherwise evergreen piece of epic hagiography.
The Herald, June 11th 2008
ends
.
Comments