DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA !!! - ARGENTINA THẮNG ALGERIA 3-0- TẠI KANSAS CITY./-Mt68
How we made Evita: Tim Rice and Elaine Paige
This article is more than 11 years old
Interviews by Laura Barnett
‘In 1974, Eva was in an unmarked grave. Now she’s in a tomb
engraved with the words: Don’t cry for me Argentina’
‘The
truth is I never left you’ … Evita through the years – in pictures
Tue 9 Sep 2014 16.00 AEST
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Tim Rice,
lyricist
One night late in 1973, I was driving to a dinner party when
I caught the tail end of a radio programme about Eva Perón. I knew very
very little about her – just a few headlines from my childhood – and was
immediately intrigued. She’d come up from the lowest origins and was
fantastically glamorous. Then there was her husband, president of Argentina,
and his fairly repressive regime, presenting her wonderful, exciting image to
the world.
It was such an interesting subject for a show – the ideal
follow-up, I thought, to Jesus Christ
Superstar. But Andrew Lloyd
Webber was busy working on a musical version of Jeeves and Wooster
with Alan
Ayckbourn, so I spent a year researching Eva under my own steam. In early
1974, I travelled to Argentina and did some interviews, but kept a low profile.
When Superstar went to to Buenos Aires, religious extremists had bombed the
theatre, so I didn’t want anyone to hear I was now tackling Eva Perón.
Initially, I was planning to tell the story from the point
of view of Eva’s hairdresser. But I had a lightbulb moment when I discovered
that Che Guevara was
from Argentina, and had been there when the Peróns were operating. I thought:
“Hang on – Che would be much more interesting than some unknown hairdresser.
That way, I get two icons for the price of one.”
When Andrew’s Jeeves show finished, having not done that
well, he said: “Let’s have a go at Eva Perón.” We made an album first to test
the water and got a single out of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina –
a very weird song to be a hit. There was huge press interest: hard as it may be
to believe, back then we were vaguely cool. Andrew got [director] Hal
Prince on board, but then Julie Covington, who’d
sung Evita on the album, turned down the stage role. We auditioned hundreds of
women, but Elaine Paige was the best. She was one of the few people who chose
not to sing Don’t Cry. She sang Yesterday instead.
The New York production was tricky: it won Tony awards, but
we got bad reviews from critics saying it was a fascist play, which was just
ludicrous. But I can say – immodestly – that the fact Eva Perón is now so well
known is 90% down to the musical. In 1974, she was buried in an unmarked grave
in Milan. Now
she’s in the Duarte family tomb in Buenos Aires, with a plaque that has “Don’t
cry for me Argentina” engraved on it in Spanish. The last time I was
there, a woman was standing in front of the tomb singing the song. I thought:
“This is weird. Shall I tell her I wrote it?” I didn’t. Maybe I should have.
Elaine Paige,
Eva
It was the show that changed my life – overnight. I hadn’t
wanted to take on another musical. I’d just told my agent I wanted to
concentrate on “serious” acting. But when the Evita LP came out, she said I had
to listen to it, the part was perfect for me. I rushed out and bought it and
saw exactly what she meant. Eva was a wonderful actress: strong, forceful, but
with a vulnerable side. I just had to play her.
Getting the part was like running a marathon: I went through
eight rounds of auditions. The final one was held over the Easter weekend. I
went to Andrew’s house in Belgravia and sang for him, Hal and Tim. Afterwards,
they said they’d let me know and I thought: “For goodness’ sake, how many more
times have I got to sing these songs?” But Tim looked at me and said: “I don’t
think you’ll need to worry about singing backing vocals for much longer.” A few
days later, I got the part.
The rehearsals were intense: the score was very challenging.
We were attempting something completely new for British musicals. Usually, they
have a “book” – dialogue between songs – but Evita was all sung. It was more
like a tragic opera. And Hal was determined to do something different with the
staging, too. The first production had no set, just a black box we all had to
step on and off, plonking down chairs.
I’ll never forget the opening. When I left the stage, the
audience began chanting “Evita! Elaine!” I’d just reached my dressing room, up
two flights of stairs, when the manager called me back down. I stood in the
wings, unable to believe what was happening. He had to push me back on. Then we
had the most fantastic party on the Thames, in a boat called the Tattershall Castle. There was
champagne and all the glitterati from the industry came. At 1am, someone went
to buy the next day’s papers, and there was my face splashed all over the front
pages. Heady times.
People are always asking what I think of the film version.
Well, I haven’t seen it, not all the way through. It came out 16 years after,
when I was in another show on Broadway. The last thing I felt like doing on my
day off was going to a cinema to watch Madonna in a part I’d
originated. From what I saw, she did a good job. She certainly died well.
A new production of Evita opens at the Dominion, London, on
22 September. Box office: 0845 200 7982.
‘The
truth is I never left you’ … Evita through the years – in pictures
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