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I am not going to spend long on the Christmas round-up, because I find it unnecessary, but I did get an item that is relevant to the rambling post I am about to inflict upon you all.
I can has a proper flannel nightgown (the blue pattern)! (This is not the relevant item.) This year, Dad had a whopping gift card for LL Bean, so he had my sister and I go through a catalog and pick some things we wanted. I haven't had a real nightgown since I was a kid, and this is totally old-fashioned, voluminous, unflattering, Little House on the Prairie style. I freaking love it. It's so comfortable. Even if it does look like I'm hiding a five month pregnancy.
Okay, THIS is the relevant item. Brand new MP3 player with way more space than my old one. When I picked my Zen Nano a couple years ago, I couldn't conceive of needing more than a gigabyte for portable music, but having an MP3 player instead of a Discman changed the way I listen to music when I'm out. Plus I started collecting different recordings of musicals. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do need multiple versions of Les Mis and Evita available IMMEDIATELY, all right?
Which brings me to my point. Having enough space to not have to pick and choose gave me a chance to finally listen to the original London recording of Evita, bringing me up to a total of four productions I've heard. There is a concept album, but I am currently too lazy to look to see if it's available anywhere. Naturally, I have thoughts on these.
I'm not going to compare all four; that would easily fill a thirty-page essay and also I would end up doing research because I'm kind of a buff on Eva Peron herself but I've forgotten a lot of what I used to know. Anyway. I am in the mood to compare the various performances of the three main roles.
The four productions in question: the 1978 West End debut, the 1979 Broadway show, the 1996 movie (look, SHUT UP, I was fourteen and it was awesome and I didn't know any better, okay?), and the 2006 West End revival. The three main roles: Eva, Juan Peron, and Che. The comparisons: categorized by role, performances listed from least to most favorite.
(I don't know why I'm so disorganized in real life. Obviously I can organize the shit out of anything if I want to.)
Eva
4. Madonna. Upfront confession: I was thirteen when the movie came out, and fourteen when I got the soundtrack. I loved it. I mean, when you're fourteen, and you know what musical taste is but you don't have any yet, and you've never had any real exposure to anything other than pop and rock, and you're kind of a weird kid to boot, this soundtrack rocks. I think I listened to it exclusively for almost a year. I will forever have a soft spot for it, despite the myriad flaws that were highlighted when I finally, FINALLY got around to checking out the Broadway soundtrack earlier this year.
All that said, we all knew Madonna was going to get stuck here. Her performance is adequate, and her sincere enthusiasm for the role really shines through, but her vocal range is not even close to being up to the task and all the contortions the writers went through to modify the musical score still can't quite hide that. She flat-out changes keys on the chorus of "Waltz for Eva and Che," for god's sake. It's not bad, and there are certainly more embarrassing things I could have been adoring at that age, but it's nothing special.
3. Elena Rogers, 2006 revival. I really, really wanted to like her. The story of how she got the part is cool - she's from Argentina, and flew out to England just to audition. And hey, it makes for great PR: a real Argentine actress singing the role of the most famous woman in the history of Argentina! And I do like the authenticity of her genuine accent (as opposed to certain FAKE accents in OTHER roles that we will get to). But Eva, in a genuine staging, is an incredibly challenging part, and Rogers falls just shy of being up to the task. There are a couple of parts on the CD where she just makes me wince. Her voice also doesn't quite convey the authority that Eva needs to have. She's better than Madonna, but you know what? So am I.
2. Patti LuPone, the Broadway show. Hi. Patti LuPone is awesome. If I had decided to do this without listening to the London show, she would have been first by a long shot. I love her Eva, and she knocks the hardest parts of the role out of the park with that belty voice of hers. I never would have imagined that she'd take second place in a comparison, but . . .
1. Elaine Paige in the London show stole my heart yesterday. I disliked many, many things in that recording (see: the rest of this entry, oy), but I will endure them to listen to her again. Her performance has something that LuPone's is missing. I'm not sure, having only listened once, if it's musical or more intangible than that, but I know that she'd taken over the number one spot before Eva had even left with Magaldi.
[NOTE: It turns out that what I thought was the London show was actually the original concept album. Whoops. Go here for corrections, proper attributions of performances, and some self-mockery. So all the places in this entry where I talk about the London show? I actually mean the original concept album. My bad.]
Che
4. David Essex in the original London show. According to Wikipedia, Essex was a pop singer. He freaking sounds like it. Actually, he sounds like a lounge singer. He would have made a great Magaldi. ("On This Night of a Thousand Stars" will never, ever not be funny. Just putting that out there.) His Che sucks. Too light and too smooth. Che is supposed to be angry and heartbroken! He's not supposed to sound like he's wearing a loud tie and too much Brylcreem!
3. Antonio Banderas, the movie. In attitude, his Che is what I see Che as being, and he's a decent singer. He's just barely falling short of being straight-up tied with Mandy Patinkin for number two - Patinkin is by far the better singer, but there are a couple places where I much prefer Banderas's rougher vocals. Also, I love the movie's version of "The Lady's Got Potential," which is a reworking of the London show's rock number rather than being the ominous piece it is in the other two shows. It's wonderfully cynical (which is bizarrely out of place for reasons I'll get into in a minute) and Banderas kicks ass with it.
2. Mandy Patinkin, the Broadway show. He has a lovely voice. Which is kind of the problem. There are places where it's too lovely, where he doesn't get rough with the music like he should. It's nowhere near Essex's painfully slick performance, and he descends deeper into the dark cynicism of the role as the soundtrack goes on, but he needs to be there from the beginning and he's not. When he's good, he's damn good, and "The Rainbow Tour" is a hilarious example of when fake accents are brilliant if used appropriately, but there are spots where he's a little too pretty and it makes me miss Banderas.
1. Matt Rawle, 2006 revival. THIS. THIS OMG SO MUCH THIS. Rawle's voice is NOT pretty. His performance is snide right from the beginning, and basically he takes my favorite things about Patinkin and my favorite things about Banderas and combines them to create the best Che EVER on the planet ever. He is so far above and beyond my favorite Che that putting him at number one on this list is like making a list of favorite types of chocolate that includes Nestle, Hershey, and Godiva. MATT RAWLE IS MY GODIVA. I cannot imagine finding a Che I love more than I love his.
Peron
4. Joss Ackland, original London show. Do I just blame 1970's England for this album or what? Essex sounds like a lounge singer; Ackland, in contrast, sounds like a surfer dude. He brings absolutely NONE of the gravitas that Peron absolutely must have to be believeable, and I laughed listening to him more than once. Terrible. Just awful. I dread having to put up with him again to listen to Elaine Paige.
3. Bob Gunton in the Broadway show. He could have been higher up on the list, because his Peron is awesomely creepy, but there's one thing holding him back: the fake Spanish accent. WTF, Bob? Nobody else in the show has an accent, real or fake (except for the ones Che puts on in "The Rainbow Tour," but that's funny, not serious). I do not at all understand this decision; I assume it was the director's, not Gunton's, but either way he loses major points for it because it is so distracting.
2. Jonathan Pryce, the movie. It's been a while since I've really listened to this soundtrack, and he didn't make a huge impression when I was young. Sure, he's the best singer on the album for obvious reasons, but we've established my lack of musical taste in my adolescence. From what I do remember about the production as a whole, though, Pryce's performance also suffers from decisions beyond his control: namely, the movie's earnest attempt to portray the Perons as a genuinely romantic couple. I could write a paper on all the tiny changes they made to the show to try and pull this off. I am an anti-romantic at heart, and I love the Perons best when they're shown as the politically shrewd pair that they were in real life. I despise "You Must Love Me" and, once I'd heard the Broadway show, I was appalled at the lengths to which the movie went to make Peron sympathetic and cuddly. Jonathan Pryce is a great performer, and I have to be the only person on the planet who in 2003 saw his name in the trailers for Pirates of the Caribbean and went, "Ooh! Peron!" but his Peron, in spite of being played by the best singer of the main trio, kinda sucks.
(Note: Despite all this, I totally wibble during the Broadway soundtrack when Gunton, in Peron's response to Eva's suggestion that her illness could be to their political advantage, blurts out, "Advantage! I'm trying to point out that you are dying! [pause] This talk of death is chilling. Of course you are not going to die." I guess because it's more subtle than the movie's equivalent. Lack of overt sentimentality is good.)
1. Philip Quast, the 2006 revival. Shocker, right? He's pretty much the reason why I sought this soundtrack out in the first place. (I also blame him for the Les Mis fixation. Jerk. Being all talented and awesome and stuff.) I make no secret of the fact that he will, by default, be my favorite of any role he performs, but it's not just favoritism at work here. When I heard he'd played Peron, I had a fit of glee because I knew immediately that it must have been fantastic. He's right for the part - he can project a tremendous air of authority and still be convincingly vulnerable, and his voice is wonderfully commanding.
Sadly, this CD is only a highlights version, so some of the smaller bits with Peron are missing. The production itself also hews a little too close to the "Juan + Eva = tru luv 4EVA" side of the Force for my taste, but does so much less annoyingly than the movie. Peron's ominous edge is retained and even played up a little when he's introduced in "The Lady's Got Potential." That's an awesome ensemble piece with a bunch of baritones playing various politicians, and Peron right in there among them. Quast's voice blends with the other singers', but the way he spits out his consonants at the end of each line also makes him stand out. It's a really effective way to introduce Peron: blending in, yet standing out. It's the best use of Quast's sharp enunciation I've heard yet. (Plus: Shrieky Evil Violins of Doom! LOVE.) He also gives this smarmy laugh at the beginning of "I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You" that cracks my shit up every. time. It's so politiciany. (Crack actor-related crossover I would pay to see: Juan Peron and Grahame Chandler having dinner. I can't quite decide whether they would hit it off immediately, or if they are just too alike to ever get along.)
In short, Quast takes the best of what Gunton had to offer (that unsettlingly dangerous quality that never lets you forget that Peron is Not A Good Guy, and that doesn't show up effectively in either of the other two shows) and uses it to make the elements borrowed from the movie's Peron (the love he develops for Eva) much more tolerable and even maybe a little bit sweet. Maybe. And maybe I kind of went "awww" during "The Montage" when the lines from "You Must Love Me" that cropped up were sung not by Eva, but by Peron. A little. Possibly.
. . . damn you, Quast.
I can has a proper flannel nightgown (the blue pattern)! (This is not the relevant item.) This year, Dad had a whopping gift card for LL Bean, so he had my sister and I go through a catalog and pick some things we wanted. I haven't had a real nightgown since I was a kid, and this is totally old-fashioned, voluminous, unflattering, Little House on the Prairie style. I freaking love it. It's so comfortable. Even if it does look like I'm hiding a five month pregnancy.
Okay, THIS is the relevant item. Brand new MP3 player with way more space than my old one. When I picked my Zen Nano a couple years ago, I couldn't conceive of needing more than a gigabyte for portable music, but having an MP3 player instead of a Discman changed the way I listen to music when I'm out. Plus I started collecting different recordings of musicals. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do need multiple versions of Les Mis and Evita available IMMEDIATELY, all right?
Which brings me to my point. Having enough space to not have to pick and choose gave me a chance to finally listen to the original London recording of Evita, bringing me up to a total of four productions I've heard. There is a concept album, but I am currently too lazy to look to see if it's available anywhere. Naturally, I have thoughts on these.
I'm not going to compare all four; that would easily fill a thirty-page essay and also I would end up doing research because I'm kind of a buff on Eva Peron herself but I've forgotten a lot of what I used to know. Anyway. I am in the mood to compare the various performances of the three main roles.
The four productions in question: the 1978 West End debut, the 1979 Broadway show, the 1996 movie (look, SHUT UP, I was fourteen and it was awesome and I didn't know any better, okay?), and the 2006 West End revival. The three main roles: Eva, Juan Peron, and Che. The comparisons: categorized by role, performances listed from least to most favorite.
(I don't know why I'm so disorganized in real life. Obviously I can organize the shit out of anything if I want to.)
Eva
4. Madonna. Upfront confession: I was thirteen when the movie came out, and fourteen when I got the soundtrack. I loved it. I mean, when you're fourteen, and you know what musical taste is but you don't have any yet, and you've never had any real exposure to anything other than pop and rock, and you're kind of a weird kid to boot, this soundtrack rocks. I think I listened to it exclusively for almost a year. I will forever have a soft spot for it, despite the myriad flaws that were highlighted when I finally, FINALLY got around to checking out the Broadway soundtrack earlier this year.
All that said, we all knew Madonna was going to get stuck here. Her performance is adequate, and her sincere enthusiasm for the role really shines through, but her vocal range is not even close to being up to the task and all the contortions the writers went through to modify the musical score still can't quite hide that. She flat-out changes keys on the chorus of "Waltz for Eva and Che," for god's sake. It's not bad, and there are certainly more embarrassing things I could have been adoring at that age, but it's nothing special.
3. Elena Rogers, 2006 revival. I really, really wanted to like her. The story of how she got the part is cool - she's from Argentina, and flew out to England just to audition. And hey, it makes for great PR: a real Argentine actress singing the role of the most famous woman in the history of Argentina! And I do like the authenticity of her genuine accent (as opposed to certain FAKE accents in OTHER roles that we will get to). But Eva, in a genuine staging, is an incredibly challenging part, and Rogers falls just shy of being up to the task. There are a couple of parts on the CD where she just makes me wince. Her voice also doesn't quite convey the authority that Eva needs to have. She's better than Madonna, but you know what? So am I.
2. Patti LuPone, the Broadway show. Hi. Patti LuPone is awesome. If I had decided to do this without listening to the London show, she would have been first by a long shot. I love her Eva, and she knocks the hardest parts of the role out of the park with that belty voice of hers. I never would have imagined that she'd take second place in a comparison, but . . .
1. Elaine Paige in the London show stole my heart yesterday. I disliked many, many things in that recording (see: the rest of this entry, oy), but I will endure them to listen to her again. Her performance has something that LuPone's is missing. I'm not sure, having only listened once, if it's musical or more intangible than that, but I know that she'd taken over the number one spot before Eva had even left with Magaldi.
[NOTE: It turns out that what I thought was the London show was actually the original concept album. Whoops. Go here for corrections, proper attributions of performances, and some self-mockery. So all the places in this entry where I talk about the London show? I actually mean the original concept album. My bad.]
Che
4. David Essex in the original London show. According to Wikipedia, Essex was a pop singer. He freaking sounds like it. Actually, he sounds like a lounge singer. He would have made a great Magaldi. ("On This Night of a Thousand Stars" will never, ever not be funny. Just putting that out there.) His Che sucks. Too light and too smooth. Che is supposed to be angry and heartbroken! He's not supposed to sound like he's wearing a loud tie and too much Brylcreem!
3. Antonio Banderas, the movie. In attitude, his Che is what I see Che as being, and he's a decent singer. He's just barely falling short of being straight-up tied with Mandy Patinkin for number two - Patinkin is by far the better singer, but there are a couple places where I much prefer Banderas's rougher vocals. Also, I love the movie's version of "The Lady's Got Potential," which is a reworking of the London show's rock number rather than being the ominous piece it is in the other two shows. It's wonderfully cynical (which is bizarrely out of place for reasons I'll get into in a minute) and Banderas kicks ass with it.
2. Mandy Patinkin, the Broadway show. He has a lovely voice. Which is kind of the problem. There are places where it's too lovely, where he doesn't get rough with the music like he should. It's nowhere near Essex's painfully slick performance, and he descends deeper into the dark cynicism of the role as the soundtrack goes on, but he needs to be there from the beginning and he's not. When he's good, he's damn good, and "The Rainbow Tour" is a hilarious example of when fake accents are brilliant if used appropriately, but there are spots where he's a little too pretty and it makes me miss Banderas.
1. Matt Rawle, 2006 revival. THIS. THIS OMG SO MUCH THIS. Rawle's voice is NOT pretty. His performance is snide right from the beginning, and basically he takes my favorite things about Patinkin and my favorite things about Banderas and combines them to create the best Che EVER on the planet ever. He is so far above and beyond my favorite Che that putting him at number one on this list is like making a list of favorite types of chocolate that includes Nestle, Hershey, and Godiva. MATT RAWLE IS MY GODIVA. I cannot imagine finding a Che I love more than I love his.
Peron
4. Joss Ackland, original London show. Do I just blame 1970's England for this album or what? Essex sounds like a lounge singer; Ackland, in contrast, sounds like a surfer dude. He brings absolutely NONE of the gravitas that Peron absolutely must have to be believeable, and I laughed listening to him more than once. Terrible. Just awful. I dread having to put up with him again to listen to Elaine Paige.
3. Bob Gunton in the Broadway show. He could have been higher up on the list, because his Peron is awesomely creepy, but there's one thing holding him back: the fake Spanish accent. WTF, Bob? Nobody else in the show has an accent, real or fake (except for the ones Che puts on in "The Rainbow Tour," but that's funny, not serious). I do not at all understand this decision; I assume it was the director's, not Gunton's, but either way he loses major points for it because it is so distracting.
2. Jonathan Pryce, the movie. It's been a while since I've really listened to this soundtrack, and he didn't make a huge impression when I was young. Sure, he's the best singer on the album for obvious reasons, but we've established my lack of musical taste in my adolescence. From what I do remember about the production as a whole, though, Pryce's performance also suffers from decisions beyond his control: namely, the movie's earnest attempt to portray the Perons as a genuinely romantic couple. I could write a paper on all the tiny changes they made to the show to try and pull this off. I am an anti-romantic at heart, and I love the Perons best when they're shown as the politically shrewd pair that they were in real life. I despise "You Must Love Me" and, once I'd heard the Broadway show, I was appalled at the lengths to which the movie went to make Peron sympathetic and cuddly. Jonathan Pryce is a great performer, and I have to be the only person on the planet who in 2003 saw his name in the trailers for Pirates of the Caribbean and went, "Ooh! Peron!" but his Peron, in spite of being played by the best singer of the main trio, kinda sucks.
(Note: Despite all this, I totally wibble during the Broadway soundtrack when Gunton, in Peron's response to Eva's suggestion that her illness could be to their political advantage, blurts out, "Advantage! I'm trying to point out that you are dying! [pause] This talk of death is chilling. Of course you are not going to die." I guess because it's more subtle than the movie's equivalent. Lack of overt sentimentality is good.)
1. Philip Quast, the 2006 revival. Shocker, right? He's pretty much the reason why I sought this soundtrack out in the first place. (I also blame him for the Les Mis fixation. Jerk. Being all talented and awesome and stuff.) I make no secret of the fact that he will, by default, be my favorite of any role he performs, but it's not just favoritism at work here. When I heard he'd played Peron, I had a fit of glee because I knew immediately that it must have been fantastic. He's right for the part - he can project a tremendous air of authority and still be convincingly vulnerable, and his voice is wonderfully commanding.
Sadly, this CD is only a highlights version, so some of the smaller bits with Peron are missing. The production itself also hews a little too close to the "Juan + Eva = tru luv 4EVA" side of the Force for my taste, but does so much less annoyingly than the movie. Peron's ominous edge is retained and even played up a little when he's introduced in "The Lady's Got Potential." That's an awesome ensemble piece with a bunch of baritones playing various politicians, and Peron right in there among them. Quast's voice blends with the other singers', but the way he spits out his consonants at the end of each line also makes him stand out. It's a really effective way to introduce Peron: blending in, yet standing out. It's the best use of Quast's sharp enunciation I've heard yet. (Plus: Shrieky Evil Violins of Doom! LOVE.) He also gives this smarmy laugh at the beginning of "I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You" that cracks my shit up every. time. It's so politiciany. (Crack actor-related crossover I would pay to see: Juan Peron and Grahame Chandler having dinner. I can't quite decide whether they would hit it off immediately, or if they are just too alike to ever get along.)
In short, Quast takes the best of what Gunton had to offer (that unsettlingly dangerous quality that never lets you forget that Peron is Not A Good Guy, and that doesn't show up effectively in either of the other two shows) and uses it to make the elements borrowed from the movie's Peron (the love he develops for Eva) much more tolerable and even maybe a little bit sweet. Maybe. And maybe I kind of went "awww" during "The Montage" when the lines from "You Must Love Me" that cropped up were sung not by Eva, but by Peron. A little. Possibly.
. . . damn you, Quast.
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