Evita. . . A review

Evita. . . .hummm. . . what can I say about Evita??

According to the description of Evita on the Forest Theater Guild’s website:

“Argentina's controversial First Lady is the subject of this dynamic musical masterpiece. As an illegitimate fifteen year old, Eva escaped her dirt-poor existence for the bright lights of Buenos Aires. Driven by ambition and blessed with charisma, she was a starlet at twenty-two, the president's mistress at twenty-four, First Lady at twenty-seven, and dead at thirty-three. Eva Peron "saint to the working-class, reviled by the aristocracy and mistrusted by the military" was destined to leave a fascinating political legacy unique in the 20th century. Told through a compelling score that fuses haunting chorales with exuberant Latin, pop and jazz influences, EVITA creates an arresting theatrical portrait as complex as the woman herself.”

Well. . . The description sounded great so I was anxious to see the production. I invited several of my friends to join me, one of which is now living in Pennsylvania and was desperate for some good theater while she was out visiting, and we made our way down to Monterey/Carmel for the day. We ate lunch on Fisherman’s Warf in Monterey and headed down to Carmel for some shopping and a little beach time. . . . . it was very enjoyable and the air was clean and sweet (compared to the Sacramento air) . . .The time came to make our way to the grocery store to pick up our dinner and head over to the theater.



The play started off with the announcement of Eva Peron’s death to the people of Argentina. It was a little weird. . . . it only got worse. Eva started off as a singer/actress and worked her way up the latter by doing a variety of different things (some not so good). . . she then met Mr. Peron, a captain in the army, and smoozed him. . . she convinced him to run for office and convinced to people to vote for him. . .at that point, it was half time and our group decided that it wasn’t worth the time to stay for the ending. LOL!! The singing was horrible, the dancing was atrocious, the acting was pitiful and the music was awful!! We had fun laughing at it all though. I was oober embarrassed because my brother and I were the only ones to have seen a play at the forest theater before and had bragged about how great it was!!! It was quite a let down. . . .come to find out, there are two different acting groups that use the theater and the good one that we usually go see doesn’t start until the fall! I may be able to redeem myself when we go see the Wizard of Oz in August. . . sigh. . . .
The Stage. . .
The band. . . uhhhh. . . yeahhh

By the way . . . I don’t recommend this production. :-)