Strands of music float through every city soundscape, emanating from buskers, passing cars or your neighbor’s flat, but not until this summer has the voice of a Hollywood star echoed around Argyll Street in London’s Soho district.
Near nightly until early September, Rachel Zegler will walk out at just before 9 p.m. onto the balcony above the London Palladium’s front doors and deliver, in her crystal-clear voice, a rendition of “Don’t Cry for Argentina” for free to the hundreds of people gathered below. The paying audience inside the theater watch the song on a live video feed.
Zegler’s six-minute balcony performance has made “Evita” the production of the moment on London’s West End.
The reasons behind staging this iconic scene in this way have sparked headlines. It is a clever marketing ploy, some say, drumming up much publicity even before the show’s official press night. It is a way to make theater more accessible, others say, a chance to see Zegler, best known for her starring turns in “West Side Story” and “Snow White,” for free.
In the context of the show, it provides an almost literal interpretation of the moment when Eva (Evita) Perón, the wife of former Argentine president Juan Perón and whose life the musical is based on, addressed a crowd from the Casa Rosada balcony.
Several British outlets have highlighted the more controversial aspects of the stunt – what about those who have paid up to £245 ($336) for a ticket to watch the show’s most famous song on a screen?
“People are complaining that it’s a free show when people have paid, but that’s the point of the show,” one onlooker, Nadine, told CNN, referencing Perón’s life spent championing the rights of the poor. Much like the themes depicted in the musical, Zegler eschews the paying patrons inside for the “peasants” outside.
But on Wednesday, no one in the crowd outside the Palladium who had either seen the show or had plans to see it minded that the main spectacle happened outside the theater.
For Alma Nielsen, visiting from Tucson, Arizona, watching part of Zegler’s performance on a screen didn’t detract from her experience. It was “amazing,” she told CNN, adding that seeing the enormous crowds on the video feed only improved the scene. Although it was her children who persuaded her to see “Evita” in the first place, she had returned without them to stand outside the theater and “experience everything.”
Similarly, Charlotte Pegrum is seeing the show in a few weeks time and liked the idea. Still, “we’re lucky, we’re locals, maybe if you’re visiting and only have one night, you might not appreciate it,” she said.
Others are more skeptical. Adam Rhys-Davies, an actor himself, isn’t quite sure what to make of it. “I don’t want the gimmick to be bigger than the show,” he told CNN.
Jamie Lloyd, who directed this production of “Evita,” has come to embody a modern, stripped-back, almost setless type of theater, embracing the use of cameras in his other shows. In his staging of “Sunset Boulevard,” Tom Francis, who plays Joe Gillis, sings the titular song while walking through the streets surrounding the theater.
“Are you going to get people sitting at home, watching it on a screen, the theatres empty and saying we’re watching it live?” Rhys-Davies said.
Whatever the reasons behind the staging – Lloyd hasn’t commented publicly and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has only noted he hopes it can continue even as the crowds get bigger – it draws a joyful, semi-spontaneous gathering of people in keeping with London’s habit of fusing the glamorous and unglamorous together. Glance left while Zegler sings and there is Ikea’s new Oxford Street store at the end of the road; glance right and there is a Five Guys with scaffolding outside it.
Life continues in a city center, even if a Hollywood star is performing for free, and the crowd is carefully controlled, allowing onlookers to pass by unimpeded, albeit blinking upwards in bemusement.
Two tourists visiting London for the first time hang around just because an excited-looking crowd has gathered. For what, they weren’t exactly sure.
And, just after the crowd had dispersed, another tourist wandered past the Palladium looking for Zegler. “Has it happened already?” she said.
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