Description

Evita marked my return to performing after a 4 year hiatus. It was also the first musical that I had done since college. I was lucky enough to land the role of Peron (even though I'm 25 years younger than he would have been at the time). The show was a lot of fun to do and seemed to lead to other great opportunities later.

Synopsis

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1952. The show opens with the announcement that Eva Peron, wife of Juan Peron, has died. The country plunges into mourning. The narrator Che challenges the crowd to see Eva for what she really was. Flashing back to her girlhood in Junin, Eva becomes enamored of a Tango singer and follows him to the glittering city of Beunos Aires. She sleeps her way up the show biz ladder while Colonel Peron is rising to power in the army. They meet at a charity concert and go back to his apartment where Eva throws out Juan's 15 year old mistress. The army and the aristocracy do not like the Colonel's new mistress at all, which causes him to resign from the army and join Eva in courting the labor unions for a power grab.

Peron is elected president of Argentina and his wife, Eva, becomes the figure head for the new government. Eva goes on a European tour to legitimize the new regime with varied degrees of success. At home she establishes the Evita Peron Charity Foundation which taxes the middle and upper class to fund her projects. This turns her into a saint in the eyes of the impoverished working class. At the height of her popularity she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer and is forced to abandon her bid for the Vice Presidency. She dies at the age of 32.