Evita – The New Broadway Cast Recording

Director’s Note:

A New Look at an Iconic Musical: Michael Grandage on directing the first major revival of Evita since the original London production in 1978

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice made it very clear they wanted a new production for a new century, and the creative team set about trying to achieve this goal in a number of ways. Any revival should be respectful of what made the original a success, but it should also be an opportunity to liberate itself from the past.

In the case of Evita, there is a generation of theatergoers who have never seen the musical live on stage. Since it was last performed we have experienced the death of Diana, which gave us an opportunity to try to understand the notion of national mourning for a female icon (although Diana was on a far smaller scale than Eva Perón), and the UK has also been at war with Argentina. In addition, we have come to know Argentina through images, music, and travel in the intervening years.

We were keen that the look and sound of this new production reflected all of this and Andrew Lloyd Webber has given the orchestrations a more authentic Argentinean flavor, which has helped us give our onstage Buenos Aires a life and structure that feels dynamic and real.

On top of this, we were lucky enough to find Elena Roger to play Eva – a woman who has been able to give the production its ultimate authenticity. She has flown up from Buenos Aires, where she commands great respect as a performer, and brought with her the beating heart of this new production that has allowed us all to offer up something new.

– Michael Grandage