Blogged By: De De Tillman
Source: New York Daily News
Photo Credit: Richard Termine
Posted: Saturday April 7, 2012 @ 4:18 p.m PST
According to New York Daily News, Mega-Star Ricky Martin gives a great big touch of star quality to the seductive revival of “Evita” at the Marquis. He also gives an appealing performance in the role of Che, which, like the show, has been re-imagined since the first Broadway run.
The sung-through celebration of the life of Eva Peron, the loved and loathed First Lady of Argentina, is less scruffy, less overtly angry.
Che isn’t the revolutionary Che Guevara beamed in from another era. That’s so 1979 — when Harold Prince’s original production vaulted Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin into the stratosphere.
Now he’s just Che, a working-class everyman lending color commentary in the songs “Oh, What a Circus” and “High Flying, Adored” and others.
Pop heartthrob Martin (a “Les Miserables” alum from 1996) delivers his numbers with gusto. While he’s at it, he hawkeyes Eva with a sly “Get her!” expression as she bedhops to the top
She was determined — right up to her death in 1952 at age 33.
Argentinian actress Elena Roger, who starred in this production when it premiered in London in 2006, occupies the juicy title part. She’s tiny in stature and not a belter, and her vulnerability proves persuasive on “I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You.” But her voice can get thin and reedy — “Rainbow High” is a low.
