Evita

Evita is a musical told entirely in song about Eva Perón, who left a small Argentine town to become an actress, rose to first lady as the wife of Juan Perón and died of cancer at 33. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the music and Tim Rice wrote the words. There is no spoken dialogue, and a narrator called Che keeps cutting into Eva's rise to ask how she managed it and at what cost.

This Broadway production is a revival directed by Jamie Lloyd that began in London. Lloyd first staged the show outdoors in Regent's Park in 2019, then brought it to the London Palladium in 2025 with Rachel Zegler as Eva. That run won Zegler the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical, and choreographer Fabian Aloise took home an Olivier too. At the Winter Garden Theatre it will be the show's second Broadway revival: the original Broadway production opened in 1979, and the first revival came in 2012.

Evita was first heard as a 1976 concept album, two years before it reached the stage, and the original Broadway production won seven Tony Awards in 1980, Best Musical among them. No British musical had won that award before.

The show opens with a death. On July 26, 1952, a movie in a Buenos Aires cinema stops mid-reel for an announcement: Eva Perón has died, and Argentina goes into national mourning. Che, one face in the crowd, finds the public grief absurd and sets out to show how she got so far.

Act one rewinds to 1934. In the provincial town of Junín, 15-year-old Eva Duarte fastens onto Agustín Magaldi, a tango singer passing through, and talks him into taking her to Buenos Aires. In the capital she soon drops him and trades up from lover to lover while she hunts for work as a performer. Che supplies the politics: a military coup in 1943 and Colonel Juan Perón outlasting his rivals among the officers.

At a benefit concert for earthquake victims from San Juan, Eva meets Perón and pitches herself as the partner who can take him all the way. She sends his young mistress packing, faces the contempt of the army and the upper classes, and in 1946 rallies the descamisados, Argentina's working poor, behind his campaign for president.

Act two finds Perón in office and Eva greeting a huge crowd from the balcony of the Casa Rosada, promising that fame has not changed whose side she is on. Che wonders what her celebrity will cost. A new look and a 1947 tour of Europe follow: Spain adores her, France is charmed, Italy compares her husband to Mussolini, and Britain offers a country house instead of the palace. At home she launches the Eva Perón Foundation, and Che hints that nobody is counting its money closely.

Then her health starts to fail. She collapses at a church appearance, and in a dreamlike argument Che accuses her of using the people; she answers that standing on the sidelines never changed anything. Che lists the government's failures, from an empty treasury to rationed beef and a muzzled press. The generals want Eva out of politics, and her wish to run for vice president leaves Perón, who knows she has cancer, caught between the army and her illness.

The show is a portrait with a point of view. Rice leaned on Evita: The Woman with the Whip, a hostile biography by Mary Main, and the historians Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro later challenged several of that book's claims, such as Eva arriving in Buenos Aires with Magaldi.

Lloyd Webber wrote the score as a rock opera, and it covers a lot of ground: choral and orchestral passages, Latin dance rhythms such as tango and paso doble, rock numbers and ballads. With no spoken scenes, every deal and quarrel is set to music, starting with the choral "Requiem" that opens the evening.

Eva is written for a mezzo-soprano and ages from 15 to 33 over the evening. Che and Magaldi are tenors, and Perón is a baritone. Rice created Che to speak for ordinary working people. Harold Prince's first staging modeled him on Che Guevara, while the 1996 film and the 2006 London revival turned him back into an anonymous everyman.

Songs to listen for:

• "Oh What a Circus" - Che's rock number, mocking the mourning in the first minutes.
• "Buenos Aires" - Latin rhythms for Eva's arrival in the capital.
• "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" - the Mistress's ballad after Eva pushes her out.
• "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" - Eva's speech to the crowd from the Casa Rosada balcony.
• "And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)" - Che and the crowd on where the foundation's cash goes.
• "You Must Love Me" - added for the 1996 film, where it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song; Lloyd's production keeps it in the score.

In London, Lloyd took one number out of the auditorium: Eva sang "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" on the Palladium's outside balcony above Argyll Street, filmed live and relayed to a large screen indoors. Broadway will not get that outdoor scene. Lloyd Webber cited safety concerns in New York, and Lloyd has said a new idea for the number is being developed for Broadway; as of October 2026, no details had been released.

As of October 2026, Rachel Zegler is set to play Eva Perón, with Diego Rodriguez as Che, James Olivas as Juan Perón and Bella Brown as the Mistress, all four repeating their London roles (Rodriguez was billed there as Diego Andres Rodriguez). Ángel Lozada joins as Agustín Magaldi. Bella Brown is also the alternate Eva Perón. Zegler made her West End debut in this staging.

Rice found the subject in 1973, when he caught the end of a radio program about Eva Perón. He researched her with help from the Argentine director Carlos Pasini Hansen, whose 1972 TV film Queen of Hearts he watched again and again, and he visited Buenos Aires. Lloyd Webber first declined and wrote Jeeves with Alan Ayckbourn; after it failed, he returned to Evita, tried the score out at the Sydmonton Festival with conductor Anthony Bowles and recorded it with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The two-record album came out in 1976, with Julie Covington as Eva, Colm Wilkinson as Che, and Paul Jones, Barbara Dickson and Tony Christie. Covington's "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" became a No. 1 single in Britain.

Harold Prince directed the first staging, produced by Robert Stigwood and choreographed by Larry Fuller, which opened at the Prince Edward Theatre in London on June 21, 1978, with Elaine Paige and David Essex. Timothy O'Brien and Tazeena Firth gave it a bare stage, a scaffold balcony and projections above. It played until February 8, 1986, a total of 3,176 performances. After stops in Los Angeles and San Francisco, it opened at the Broadway Theatre on September 25, 1979, with Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin and Bob Gunton, and ran until June 26, 1983, for 1,567 performances.

Alan Parker's 1996 film starred Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce. Michael Grandage then directed a London revival at the Adelphi Theatre in 2006 with Elena Roger, and a Broadway revival that opened at the Marquis Theatre on April 5, 2012, with Roger, Ricky Martin and Michael Cerveris; it gave 337 performances. In 2019 New York City Center mounted a separate staging by Sammi Cannold, which later went to the American Repertory Theater.

Lloyd's version played Regent's Park from August 2 to September 21, 2019. At the Palladium it opened on July 1, 2025, and closed on September 6, 2025. A 10-track highlights album followed on October 24, 2025, and Evita: The Full Album, 30 tracks recorded live at the Palladium, on August 28, 2026. The transfer was announced on April 29, 2026, and the Winter Garden was named on May 26, 2026. Previews are scheduled to begin on February 27, 2027, ahead of opening night on March 25, 2027.