When I saw this at the cinema in 97 people walked out

Of course she was glamorous. My point in comparing her to Princess Di was that both of them used their gender, their glamour and their crowd-pleasing geniality to create an image that hid duplicity and connivance behind it.

(Obviously, I have real-life experience of Princess Diana's public image that I didn't have of Eva Peron's. I won't go into off-track detail, but I referred to Princess Di because, like Evita, Diana used PR carefully, perhaps slyly, to sculpt a public image that belied her activities behind the scenes, and made people see her in an emotive, infatuated way that was largely wish-fulfilment on their part and became increasingly unconnected to reality, culminating in hysteria and extreme unreality at her death. It's valid to refer it to Princess Di because, although historically Eva Peron obviously came first, for the majority of modern-day audiences of this musical, especially once the film came out, Princess Di was their own experience that they could relate to the story through.)

That's not the first time I've heard that quote from Tim Rice. And it's easy for him to suggest that his audiences are similarly dazzled by the glamour and somehow don't understand what he was trying to portray, but really, the issue is that they (we) are reacting to the piece as he wrote it. He didn't shape the piece well enough to portray much more than a two-dimensional fallen-princess story. Every story element seems drawn to evoke sympathy for Eva, the poor, mistreated girl from the adulterous "other family" made good through her own strength of will, whose sole focus was elevating the lot of her "descamisados" even while she was reviled and unappreciated by the rich of her own country and the sneering statesmen of Europe and then who was tragically struck down by an early death. He barely mentions the corruption, the self-aggrandisement, the secret theft of public funds and the totalitarian approach to government backed up by an unelected military that marked Peron's regime, actively abetted by Eva. If people don't see that in Rice's musical, it's his doing, not his audience's.

Lastly, a lot of the South Americans in my part of the world escaped here from the effects of last century's various totalitarian governments, from Argentina and Chile in particular. So while I'm not saying theirs is the only response possible, it is the one that I mostly saw in public here at the time. There were apparently quite a few publicly-unhappy people earlier on as well, when the stage version first opened here, and for much the same reason: that the musical does too much to glamorise Eva and make her a sad and sympathetic figure, and doesn't do enough to tell the other side of the story.



You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

However, I had the opposite reaction from some in the audience. I saw this in Toronto and some Argentines in the audience (I assumed they are Argentines because of the reaction and their accent) actually started to cry uncontrollably when Eva was dying. The wailing (from an older lady) got so bad that they escorted her out and she continued to cry after the movie had finished. My sister and I both looked at each other and agreed she must have been a Peronista or something but it was an awkward moment.