Rachel Zegler wows critics, but is it the event of the summer?

London Palladium

Evita may turn out to be the theatrical event of the year, not only because of the most famous balcony scene since Romeo And Juliet. There has been massive publicity surrounding the appearance of Rachel Zegler each evening at 9pm singing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, not to the audience inside the Palladium, but to the general public outside. This was just one of many innovations the critics loved.
Director Jamie Lloyd returned to the West End with another Lloyd Webber musical, following up his award-strewn Sunset Boulevard, which also featured off stage activity relayed to the audience via video. This time he has revived and enhanced his 2019 Open Air Theatre version of the story of Eva Peron.  The critics enjoyed Rachel Zegler’s performance and the company’s energetic dancing. The positive reviews praised the rock concert atmosphere, Soutra Gilmour‘s minimalist set of bleachers for the cast to climb, the show’s critique of populism, and the zoning in on the actors. The negative comments suggested the loud sound and spectacle drowned out emotion and narrative.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

5 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

The Standard’s Nick Curtis encapsulated the positive response: ‘Great theatre can be about many things: star quality, spectacle, the lightning-in-bottle capture of a moment, the alchemical power of song or speech on a bare stage. In this Evita, all those things come triumphantly together.’

Dominic Cavendish of the Telegraph was blown away. It was, he wrote, ‘a total triumph, dominated by a powerhouse, reputation-restoring performance from Zegler, 24, and stamina-testing choreography by Fabian Aloise (who deserves equal credit with Lloyd).’ He expanded on the qualities of the star: ‘Her talent demands our rapture; equally, her mass seduction of the audience feels carefully plotted, enhancing the show’s thematic thrust. Lloyd ensures the evening stokes a cult of personality – combining whistle-stop biography with a parable for our age of showbiz politics.’ Going against the conclusion of many of his peers, he noted: ‘Evita could easily be too cool for us to care about – yet the go-for-broke momentum reveals redeeming cracks of vulnerability. The demand to be adored eats Evita up, before cancer claims her.’

Sam Marlowe at The Stage referred to the first iteration of this production back in 2019 at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre: ‘it’s punchier, darker, more exhilaratingly dynamic and more brilliantly layered than ever. It is meta, without being arch, and while it has the raw energy and high-octane energy of a rock gig, it’s also full-bloodedly theatrical. It knocks the breath from your body and leaves you gasping, every moment taut and vibrating with passionate intensity.’ It is, she said, ‘unmissable’.

The i-paper’s Fiona Mountford called it ‘a thrilling shot in the arm for the much-loved musical with its divinely tuneful score…throbbing with sex and muscle, as never before has the transactional nature of Eva’s rise from rural poverty to the heights of Argentine society been so clearly delineated.’ She noted: ‘Lloyd is not a director inclined to bother with the faff of scenery, meaning that our attention here is rewardingly re-angled towards the words and music. There is a stage-spanning flight of steps, over which the ensemble pound in Fabian Aloise’s pulsating choreography.’

Sarah Crompton of WhatsOnStage said Zegler ‘really is superb, with a clear, strong voice and astonishing amounts of energy as she powers her way through the show.’ she also identified: ‘Lloyd’s quality as a director is that he generates huge momentum, but he also understands stillness and subtlety. He lets the acting breathe.’

Of the balcony scene, LondonTheatre’s Marianka Swain observed: ‘Having now seen it from inside the Palladium, I’m thrilled to report that it’s just as electrifying, if not more, as part of the show. On a giant screen we see, live, not just Eva but hundreds of watching people, camera phones raised aloft, transfixed by her – a jaw-dropping encapsulation of this timely tale of populist politics, showbiz, celebrity worship, and purposeful myth-making.’

Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times said: ‘That alfresco balcony scene is both an outlier and a hallmark of the boundary-pushing fun to be found throughout.’ He concluded that the production is ‘properly sensational, in that it hits the senses first, the brain second. Did I feel huge amounts for our morally ambiguous heroine? Not really. Did I care that I didn’t care? Not really. What a circus. What a parade.’

The Independent’s Alice Saville gave an analysis of its politics: ‘this gorgeous sensory overload of a show is its own comment on the rising tide of fascism. Populism is sexy, captivating, overpowering – a way for weary people to escape the dull realities of right and wrong. You know there’s something deeply twisted under that pretty shiny surface, but, like the audiences of Evita, you’re powerless to resist.’

4 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑

‘This Evita is not without its flaws, it’s rushed, flashy, and sometimes narratively thin, but it’s also thrilling, stylish, and full of theatrical bravado,’ said Greg Stewart in his TheatreWeekly review.

Time Out’s Andrjez Lukowski declared: ‘Coherence isn’t this Evita’s strong suit. But there is so much that is good about it – from Zegler, to the choreography, to the timely antifascist sentiment, to That Scene – that I can look past a few negatives. It’s not just the London theatre event of the summer, but the London event of the summer full stop.’

3 stars ⭑⭑⭑

Adam Bloodworth for CityAM was impressed by the ‘utterly incredible choreography and the litany of musical numbers…It’s difficult to imagine that anything this stimulating has ever played in the West End before’ but found that ‘the show is hard to follow for people who don’t know the story well. It’s endless energy and high-octane choreo with very little time to actually sit with the characters and their feelings.’

The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar made a similar point: ‘There is an approximation to the characters as a whole, with very little focus on Perón’s interiority. Maybe that is not the point, but how then can the audience feel the tragedy of her untimely death – which takes up so much time in the second half of the musical – if they cannot connect with it emotionally?’ She did concede: ‘If a successful musical is simply about the singing, dancing and spectacle, this one soars. The choreography… is out-of-this-world imaginative. The ensemble mesmerise with their sexual energy and charismatic aggression.’

Clive Davis of The Times complained: ‘(Zegler’s) voice is fine but it has to compete with the musical director Alan Williams’s wildly amplified orchestra. Too many songs whirl past in a semi-audible maelstrom.’ He commented: ‘I’d be genuinely surprised if newcomers to the show have a clue what is happening for much of the evening as this dressed-down, concert-style spectacle… rattled through Eva Peron’s journey…Call it TikTok musical theatre, if you like. Everything is radically compressed, and for all the verve of the ensemble dancing you’ve no time to tease out the meaning of a song before the next one crashes down upon you.’

2 stars ⭑⭑

Gary Naylor for BroadwayWorld was as ruthless as one of Peron’s assassins: ‘Out goes set design, out goes Argentina, out goes costuming and in comes lights (constellations of them), in comes Eurovisionish big, frenetic dance routines and in comes a Hollywood superstar. What emerges after all this reconceptualising is easier to define by saying what it isn’t rather than what it is – because it certainly isn’t musical theatre.’ Among the many targets of his vitriol were: ‘All (Zegler) has to work with are the songs and three costumes and she’s fighting music mixed far too loud far too often. She has no chance of ever developing a rounded, nuanced Eva.’ Although she ‘fares better than James Olivas as Perón, who gets no full fig military uniform and has to make do with an absurd short tie, like a rebellious Year 9 schoolboy’. And ‘Most egregious of all is the treatment of the beautiful lament, “Another Suitcase in Another Hall”. Bella Brown delivers a bravura performance of one of the show’s greatest numbers, but we hardly know that she was Perón’s mistress being ruthlessly shunted out of his life by Eva because there’s no backstory’.

Critics’ Average Rating 4.2⭑

Value rating 44 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price.)

Evita can be seen at the London Palladium to 6 September 2025. Click here to buy tickets directly from the theatre 

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