EXCLUSIVE: Jamie Lloyd (Sunset Boulevard) is not prepared to sit on his hands and wait another two years to take the electrifying West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita starring an unbelievably incandescent Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) to Broadway. “I would love for it to go straight away,“ he told this column, stressing that means early next year.
Rice is in agreement with the director, telling Deadline that he wants to see Evita in New York as soon as it’s ready to go. “We’re not getting any younger are we?” says the lyricist nodding towards the composer he’s known for more than six decades.
Some connected to the show would rather wait until 2027 but Lloyd emphasizes that he’s eager for 2026. “That’s when I would like it to go, as soon as possible, really,” he said, a point he repeated to me several times on Tuesday night and into the early hours of Wednesday following one of the biggest, buzziest London first night openings in years.
Lloyd reveals that he already has advisors checking out Broadway houses. He confirms that Michael Harrison for Lloyd Webber Harrison Musicals would produce the Broadway transfer with his Jamie Lloyd Company.
Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves, Pedro Pascal, Sarah Paulson, Ben Whishaw, Dame Elaine Paige – who created the role of Eva Perón in Evita in 1978 – Richard E. Grant, Dame Arlene Phillips and other luminaries were in attendance for last night’s opener.
Guests entered via London’s Great Marlborough Street and endured several levels of security before they got to their seats. The crush, like a combination of Grand Central and Waterloo railway stations at rush hour, was such that the show started nearly 20 minutes late. There were no tears. We lapped it up because event theater on this scale is rare.
From the balcony to the crowds
One of this production’s celebrated moments occurs in Act 2 (clip below) when Zegler performs the anthemic “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” from the Palladium’s balcony to crowds, often in excess of 1,000, waiting in the street below. The scene is shot live and then relayed onto a big screen to those seated in the auditorium. “I would love to see [this scene] go to Broadway. We’ve just got to find the right theatre. I would love for it to go straight away,” Lloyd says with that determined flash in his eye.
Rachel Zegler delivers a powerful performance on the London Palladium balcony for the official opening night of ‘Evita’ and the audience watching from the streets of London cheer her on as she walks back into the theater pic.twitter.com/Hr8Y9sef4A
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) July 2, 2025
However, Lloyd notes that the practicalities have to be worked out, like road closures and also ensuring that a live performance to a crowd on a sidewalk, or a closed-off road, wouldn’t interfere with neighbouring theaters by being too loud.
“You can imagine the logistics of doing that in New York. Everything in New York is bigger and bolder so if the crowd here is in excess of 1,000 a night what’s it going to be like over there?,” he says gulping at the prospect of it all.
“We’ve got to do it in a way that makes it safe for everyone. We’ll work closely with the mayor’s office when the time comes and make it a big event for New York in the way that it’s become a big event for London and for British theater.” His eyes brighten as we speak.
In a previous column, I wasn’t totally sold on the Casa Rosada balcony moment because it was coup de théâtre that only those watching Zegler live outside could fully benefit from, while those of us inside were denied that jolt of connection. The scene works better now than it did at first preview. The spectators in the street become part of the narrative when the cameras pan to them.
“The balcony scene is in the fabric of the production,” says Lloyd, “and it’s so specific for me in terms of charting the emotional and psychological journey of the role, and it says so much about the production and the story.”
It’s not there as a gimmick, Lloyd insists. “It’s not schtick, it’s all very intentional. There’s always a very clear decision being made…”
Zegler is beyond eager to play Evita in her home town sooner too. “I would love to do the show in New York. To do anything where you’re from is a real gift.”
The star also cleared up a little “Do-re-mi-fa-so” matter concerning rumours about her playing the Julie Andrews role in the Sound of Music at Lincoln Center. She would love to do such a thing but “I don’t mind squashing that,” she says,” It’s not real.”
After the 12 week season at the London Palladium, which can’t be extended, Zegler says that she’s planning to do a film with Marisa Tomei. It’s called She Gets It from Me with Julia von Heinz directing.
The show at the Palladium is a triumph for Zegler. But also for Lloyd Webber and Rice. This is a musical that originated at the Prince Edward Theatre 47 years ago. Rice corrects me and says that it’s actually more than 50 years ago because there was an Evita album before there was a stage show. The re-imagination at the Palladium feels as if it was written yesterday. I know the score and lyrics well, but it sounds so fresh. Can’t wait to get my hands on the single of Zegler singing to the masses.
Lloyd Webber is thrilled with Zegler’s performance at the Palladium and wants her to do Evita on Broadway because “she’s going to have one of the greatest careers” by virtue of the fact that she excels on stage and screen – “and she sings beautifully” – and, he says, she should be seen in a musical in New York having already performed there in a play. Since you ask, it was Romeo + Juliet, in which she starred opposite Heartstopper’s Kit Connor.
The impresario and composer continues his praise for Zegler, reckoning that “the world’s her oyster if she makes the right choices, gets the right roles, I think she could be the biggest star.”
Smiling, he adds: ”She could be that very rare beast,” who conquers stage and screen.
“The luckiest girl in the world”
Zegler blushes when I repeat Lloyd Webber’s words to her. Laughing, she says that she told him “to stop” when they had a similar conversation backstage. She’s clearly not good at taking compliments, and sighs.
“I feel like the luckiest girl in the word,” she says of leading a cast that includes Diego Andres Rodriguez as Che and James Olivas as Juan Perón. Both are on top form.
“I don’t think I ever considered Evita would be considered so chic…,” she tells us post-show in the Palladium’s Cinderella Bar before a favored few head off to the Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue to tango till dawn. “It was a niche thing to love when I was a kid. To see young people show up in hoards everyday is amazing and it really makes me feel so lucky.” She adds that it was gratifying to revive something and see so many young people show up for Romeo + Juliet and be interested in Shakespeare. Then to see them interested in 1940s Argentine politics, she marvels.
She says that she “trusts” Jamie Lloyd with her life. ”There’s something to be said about people who reinvent the wheel in the way that he does…,” she trills.
Where does her voice come from, I ask her. From God, I’m sure. “Years and years of training. Nobody in my family is a singer so I was the odd one out, but hey, I’ve made a career of it which is nice,” she responds warmly.
I catch up with Jamie Lloyd some more and I wonder how it is that he has become the foremost interpreter of Lloyd Webber in this century. Hal Prince and Trevor Nunn were certainly instrumental in staging the composer’s original works but Lloyd has made them vitally accessible to a contemporary audience. Piers Morgan sat in front of me and his 13 year-old daughter watched the show as if under a spell. Well behaved, too. Unlike two semi-famous people who blithely chatted away in the aisle holding up the start of Act 2.
Andrew Lloyd Webber shot daggers at them.
Jamie Lloyd says that he finds it very moving working on Evita because, “my dad used to listen to this score, all these songs, in the cab of his truck. He’s not around anymore and neither is my mum, and it took me back to my childhood, hearing these songs for the first time and really discovering theater for the first time through Andrew’s music.“
Also, “It’s a pinch me moment,” the director says as he wonders what his parents would have made of him directing a show that his dad adored at an historic theatrical venue.
“It felt like a bit of an historic moment tonight,” says Lloyd, his voice catching. It’s a testament to the company’s “hard work,” he adds.
He went on to cite his superb cast and creatives including set and costume designer Soutra Gilmour, choreographer Fabian Aloise, Musical supervisor and musical director Alan Williams, lighting designer Jon Clark, Sound designer Adam Fisher and orchestrations by one Lloyd Webber and longtime collaborator David Cullen. He’s also in awe of the videographers and production crew who shoot the balcony sequence.
Lloyd says that Zegler, who he describes as “a mega star, she is one of the most talented artists I’ve worked with,” will definitely lead the Broadway production, as if that was ever in doubt!
“She can sing this score like nobody else… she has charisma, wit, she’s a joy to work with. …the cast are constantly on it, they’re kind of like like athletes and that brings tears to my eyes every night.”
Not all of his “athletes“ can make the journey to NYC. However, Rodriguez and Olivas are more than likely to.
Rodriguez, as fly-on-the-wall, Che, is off stage one time only which gives him the opportunity to glug a glass of water in the wings all the while observing what’s happening on stage during his short absence.
“Tonight was unreal…there was a lot of excitement to this night and it was an overwhelming response,” says Rodriguez, who also noted that it felt “almost awkward to stand on stage for so long for the bows.”
Olivas, who grew up in Houston, Texas and then Los Angeles, also makes his UK debut.
Peron is usually played by actors over 50. Olivas is 28. He declares that the show is “enthused with youth,” which I thought was a good way of putting it.
Although, I see the Daily Mail drama critic Patrick Marmion describes Olivas’s Perón as a “hunky sexbomb porn star towering over tiny Zegler, with watermelon biceps bulging out of his sleeveless shirt.”
Phew! Cold shower for Mr. Marmion.
The great thing about Jamie Lloyd’s production of Evita is that folk who aren’t ordinarily bothered with stage arts have been galvanized by the phenomenal interest in this particular show. It’s being discussed outside of the arts pages – on the radio, the telly, in pubs and on public transport – because a gifted young artist with diamond star quality is performing a half century old classic song from the balcony of a storied show palace.
And she’s unmissable.
The post Breaking Baz: London Palladium Hit ‘Evita’ Could Move Straight To Broadway As Rachel Zegler & Jamie Lloyd Cry: “Don’t Wait For Me Argentina!” appeared first on Deadline.
