Reviews - Evita and The Big Meal

Gee, I haven’t had a two-show day in a long time, but yesterday I unexpectedly saw the matinee of Evita (my boss’s ticket-date canceled, so I got the nod) and then the evening performance of The Big Meal at Playwrights Horizons.  I definitely enjoyed them both!  Though I’m getting much too old to see two shows in one day – I feel almost hungover… ;)  

Evita is the first Broadway musical I ever saw.  I have very strong memories of it (the rocking chairs!), along with repeated viewings of the Tony broadcast numbers.   It’s the first cast album I ever purchased, so I’ve been listening to Patti and Mandy wail on those songs for YEARS.  It’s been so long, though, that I was looking forward to seeing a new take on the material.

On the whole, I enjoyed the revival.  I thought the staging was terrific; the choreography was fantastic; the sets and lights were stunning; the characterizations were solid.  If the show on the whole came off as less exciting as I remember it, well…ok.

I’ve never really been on the Ricky Martin bandwagon.  I saw him in Les Miz a million years ago – I remember thinking he looked quite fetching in the Marius costumes, but his singing was painful.  Painful as in “I’m fearing his vocal cords are going to come out of his mouth at any moment.”  Almost as painful as Pierce Brosnan’s singing in the Mamma Mia movie.  Blech.  I will say that his singing seemed much freer and stronger in Evita.  His sound was perfectly pleasant and he held the stage gracefully.  But he’s not very compelling.  He’s a genial narrator of sorts, instead of Patinkin’s Che Guevara/opposition to the Perons.  I think the show loses something in that change.  There’s no push/pull,  no tension.  Maybe the show is robbed of some of its electricity.  Ricky Martin finally got a chance to dance in the second act and he moves very nicely.  Perhaps they should’ve taken advantage of that earlier in the show.  The Argentine tango is used quite effectively throughout this production as a parallel to politics.  I liked how it was used, and think they could've utilized Ricky Martin better through the dance. 

Michael Cerveris is, as you might expect, wonderful.  J   He captures the pompousness and egotism of Peron, and includes an extra dimension of warmth and affection for Eva.  I liked how he saw her as an asset to his campaign, but also as a woman.  He sings beautifully (too bad he doesn’t have more to sing) and moves quite well, too.  He and Eva have a bit of a tango in “I’ll Be Surprisingly Good to You” that is very effective.

Yes, I’ve saved the star for last.  Elena Roger, who is originally from Argentina, played Eva to great acclaim in London a few years ago.  She’s a tiny slip of a thing, so to see that much ambition and raw appetite in such an itty bitty lady was quite interesting.  I liked her acting, her dancing was fantastic and her singing was…not.  God love her, she can’t really sing.  And, hello, if nothing else, the lead female in an Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera should be able to sing.  I’m not wrong here, am I?  I could’ve gone with the overly-nasal tone of her voice if she just could’ve hit the notes.  Sigh.  And I believe we have yet another reason why this show wasn’t as exciting as I would’ve wanted it to be.  But when she was dancing (and not singing), especially in “What’s New, Buenos Aires,” she was exhilarating. 

So…I guess I give Evita a qualified thumbs-up.  If you have memories of the original production emblazoned on your brain and you want the excitement of the Hal Prince version, you’ll probably be very disappointed in this revival.  But if you like the musical well-enough and don’t mind seeing it presented in a very different way (and without a powerhouse singer as Eva), you should check this one out.

A few months ago, I was at a seminar featuring playwrights Annie Baker and Dan LeFranc, talking about their work and careers.  They were both really charming and delightful, and the way Annie and Dan described Dan’s work made it sound like stuff I would really want to see.  So when tickets finally became available for Dan’s The Big Meal at Playwrights Horizons, I pounced on them.  And I was not disappointed.

 The Big Meal is about eighty years in the life of one family, presented at various restaurant’s dinner tables.  It speeds along at a quick clip, about 90 minutes, but you never feel rushed or short-changed.  The family dynamics are immediately familiar, yet you go to places you couldn’t really expect at the start.   The fantastic cast of eight plays everyone in the various generations, so we have a couple in their 20s, a couple in their late 30s, and an older couple of a certain age, plus two children.  So, the couple we meet in the beginning on their first date will eventually be played by the older actors, as the younger actors begin to play the children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.  It’s a wonderful conceit.  You’ve always heard ‘we become our parents,’ yes?  It’s quite moving to see that sentiment played out, yet not.  There are clichéd situations, but they’re never written, performed or directed in a clichéd manner.

The ephemeral aspects of time, sibling rivalry, birth, death—all aspects of the lives of three generations of a family are played out.  I think the way the author wrote about death, in particular, and the way the director has staged it, is genius.  I won’t spoil it, in case you want to see the show (which you should – they’ve just added another extension, so stop reading and buy tickets!), but it really takes balls to go there.  For the actors, too, I think.

All of the actors are grand, but I just want to single out Anita Gillette and Jennifer Mudge, as really finding so many layers in all of the characters they play.  And they even use the layers of the previous actor when they take on a role themselves.  Brilliant.

The show is quite funny and very touching and I highly recommend it.  In the interest of full disclosure, though, there were quite a few people in the audience last night who were bored out of their minds.  I know this because they began talking to each other in their outdoor voices, and/or began texting furiously.  I also have a couple of friends who didn’t enjoy it quite so much.  And, honestly, I do think it’s maybe ten minutes too long, with one too many ‘end scenes.’  But I found the play to have a fresh voice on an old topic and I look forward to what Dan LeFranc brings us next.