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TW: How did you originally get to play Perón? RA: I auditioned in
Chicago and subsequently was flown to New York by the [Harold] Prince Office
for the call-backs. Actor's Equity
designates three or four "point-of-origin" cities in the United
States and Chicago is one of
them. When a show originates from one
of these cities, the producer isn't required to pay a "per diem"
stipend to the local actors. Because
the majority of our company was from Chicago, this created significant
savings for The Robert Stigwood Group. Our company ran almost a year in
Chicago before we started touring. (As
soon as we toured, then we all received per diem along with our regular
salary). Prior to EVITA, it wasn't standard procedure to audition for
national tours in Chicago. At that
time, most touring productions came into town for only a 6-8 week run. EVITA
changed the landscape with regard to touring strategy and this was later
copied by many other shows. |
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TW: Where all have you played the role? –
and related to that question – could you shed some light as to where
the “Florence Lacey World Tour” toured? RA: I debuted in the role on Broadway with the original cast with Patti LuPone and
Mandy Patinkin) one month after the show won the Tony awards. I had just been cast in the Chicago company and was told that Bob
Gunton (the original Broadway Perón) was getting married and going on a
honeymoon for a few weeks. I'll never
forget Howard Haines, the business manager's question to me: "Would you
like to fill in for him!?!" And my simple and immediate response: "Sure!" In total, there were four National Touring
Companies of EVITA (the last of which being the Bus and Truck
Tour.) The 1st National Tour was the Los Angeles company. They "sat" in Los Angeles for
several years (the only other city they played was San Francisco.) We were the 2nd National Touring
Company. We sat in Chicago for almost
a year and then went on to play most of the major American cities including:
Washington D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, Pittsburgh,
Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, as well as Toronto in Canada. In many of these cities we sat for months
at a time. After that, was the Scandinavian Tour (which was also directed
by Hal Prince.) Over there we played
Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo in Sweden; Oslo in Norway and Copenhagen in
Denmark. I then did a summer stock tour
playing all the major venues (including many of the cities I've already
mentioned) as well as Indianapolis, Kansas City, Dallas and Providence, Rhode
Island. After that there was a
Canadian Tour which played Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton,
Ottawa, Hamilton and Montreal. Then
began the Wolfgang Bocksch European Tour of which I did four or
five different "legs." We'd go over to Europe for months at a time,
then return back to the U.S. for a period of months before going back to Europe. The major European cities where we
premiered EVITA in Germany were:
Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Dusseldorf. (Mr. Bocksch, our producer, was German so
we literally played practically *everywhere* in Germany.) We also premiered EVITA
in the following major European cities (as well as many smaller venues too
numerous to mention): Paris, France -
Rome, Milan, Florence and Bologna in Italy - Amsterdam and Rotterdam in
Holland - Brussels and Antwerp in Belgium -
Zurich, Geneva and Basil in Switzerland and Vienna and Salzburg in
Austria. (We were *not* the first company to ever play the show in Vienna.
There had already been a previous German language production.) The only other major city we played on the
Bocksch Tour was Singapore. Technically, this made it an International Tour,
I suppose rather than just a European Tour. |
TW: As you are the first Perón I've interviewed,
is there anything special you'd like to mention about the role of Perón? I think it's an
underrated
role, if you ask me...
RA:
I'm glad to hear you say that. Several
people have told me that they thought it was a "thankless role!" I certainly didn't feel that
way
when I played it and still don't share that view. I believe that having a strong Perón is
essential to a good production of the show.
In the stage version, Perón is the clear antagonist. Che is the obvious protagonist. Eva is suspended somewhere in between. Hal Prince's concept of the show was to make
a statement about how easily people can be manipulated by the media. The show is designed so that the audience
only sees Perón-controlled images of their lives up until Che's speech that
proceeds Perón's "She's a Diamond" number. The moment when Che exclaims, "I'll
tell *you* what's new Buenos Aires!" should be an mind bender for the
audience who suddenly realizes that everything they'd been watching had been
manipulated by the Peróns’ propaganda machine. At that moment they have to re-evaluate
everything. How do they feel about
Eva? Was she the saint her people
worshipped or the sinner Che portrays her to be? With Perón, it's an easier decision. He is a dictator - a bully. Yet, his greatest characteristic was that he
made sure that he was always under-estimated by his enemies. He projected a grand-fatherly image with his
cheesy smile (for the cameras) however behind the scenes, he was ruthless in
eliminating his adversaries.
The
Peróns were complicated people. They
also did a lot of good for Argentina.
Before Perón came to power, Argentina was a feudal farming country. Under his regime, it was industrialized and
modernized. Unions were created for the
first time. Suddenly, people were making
5-6 times more money than they'd ever previously made. You can imagine then how popular the Peróns
became with the people! The Peróns built
schools and they provided Eva's lottery programs for the poor (which look
pathetic when compared with our present day welfare programs in the U.S. but
they were actually more than what we were doing for the poor in our own country
at that time!) What was exciting about
doing the show night-in-and-night-out was that during every show we got to take
the audience on a trip and mess with their minds! They wouldn't realize until after the Che
speech in Act II that they'd really only been watching snipets of propaganda
about the Peróns - that they had been connecting the dots and filling in the
blanks (writing their own story) about who the Peróns really were. The show is set-up so that Eva is both sinner
*and* saint. And each audience member
has to decide to what degree she was either one. If you'd ask 10 different audience members
after a specific show, there'd be a wide difference of opinion between them as
to what they got out of it and how they felt about the Peróns. EVITA is Brechtian, in that
sense. It's theatre that doesn't just
entertain you but makes you think.
I was unhappy with what they did to the role of Perón in the film version. Literally, 70% of his lyrics were changed ! They made him into a kind and sensitive care-giver! As a consequence, they removed him as the antagonist of the story. The stronger the evil in Perón, the more Che has to rail against. Subsequently, Che was also weakened in the film version. Che should be equal parts revolutionary and narrator. With an ineffectual Perón, Che is left only to narrate. My guess is that in exchange for permission to film the movie in Argentina, Webber and Rice had to rewrite the role of Perón to make him more of a sympathetic figure. [Note from Tim: Bingo.]
I
loved playing Perón because during each show I got to rise from the unknown
ranks of the military to become President of my country and one of the most
powerful men on earth. I got to marry a beautiful, intelligent, clever, pin-up
girl/celebrity/movie and radio star, who developed a legion of fans who adored
her. And then in Act II, I had to see
Eva waste away and die, while I simultaneously watched my political career
crumble along with the decline of the country's economy until I was forced into
exile. Actors are always looking for parts with range. Perón runs the gamut. Parenthetically, I've
always felt that Perón truly loved Eva and that she reciprocated with genuine
love and devotion. In my opinion, they
were a lot more than just "surprisingly good for ‘each other’!"
TW: As I try to ask everyone I interview, do you
have any unique/interesting/quirky stories you'd like to share about your time
on
stage in EVITA?
RA:
Nothing uncontrollably hilarious ever happened during the thousands of
performances in which I played Perón. Some musicals lend
themselves
to that kind of thing more than others.
In my opinion, EVITA isn't one of them. Its scene design is basically a "black box" with the stage lights
hanging in clear view of the audience.
And the show works largely as a result of the concentrated efforts of the
ensemble which compels the audience to believe that they're actually at the
Charity Concert or the Casa Rosada. EVITA
is a wonderful ensemble show for that reason.
The chorus doesn't have time to sit in the dressing room and play cards
or think up ways to clown around on stage and not get caught. Either you're changing clothes or you're on
stage for the most part. We all took our
responsibilities seriously and the level of professionalism was extremely
high. Naturally, there were things like
doors that wouldn't operate properly ("Good Night and Thank-You" and
during the final bedroom scene between Perón and Eva.) [Note from Tim: during a performance in London – Marti
Webb went to open the door to respond to Perón in the “Dice Are
Rolling” scene – the knob fell off and clunk-a-clunk-a-clunk-a
rolled off into the orchestra pit – Marti couldn’t open the door
from her side, and finally John Turner figured out that the door wouldn’t
budge – he opened it from the other side and the scene continued. After the performance when questioned about
the event, Marti said, “I refused to walk through that
‘wall’”!] But in those
instances, we just kept going, found solutions and the audience went right
along with us.
Because
EVITA is an opera, the music was just going to continue anyway. There wasn't time to ad lib or fool
around. I remember one show in Seattle
where for unknown reasons during "I'd Be Surprisingly Good for You" I
sang: "Please go on, *I* enthrall you..." instead of: "Please go on, you enthrall *me*..." Derin Altay was playing Eva at the time and
her eyes got very wide catching my egotistical mistake but she answered me
without missing a beat. I also recall
that during a performance on the European Tour, one of the torches in "A
New Argentina" accidentally set one of the upstage curtains on fire, but
Jimmy Sbano, our Che, quickly ran off stage and re-entered with a fire
extinguisher to douse the flames. The
company kept right on singing and the audience acted like it was part of the
show!
[Note from Tim: I always
wondered if something caught fire during that scene…]
I'd
also like to mention here that I feel especially fortunate in all of this that
I was able to share my EVITA experience with my family! During my long association with EVITA,
my wife, actress Didi Hitt, was also cast in the show. Technically on the National Tour, she was
cast
before I was! We are so lucky to have
been able to see so much of the world together courtesy of EVITA! During the years in the various productions,
she's played literally every featured part except Eva and the Mistress! She's played the nurse at Eva's bedside,
Magaldi's girlfriend at the Charity Concert, a sister in Buenos Aires, an
Aristocrat, learned the dance to BA and by the end of our touring she was
playing Eva's mother! Our son, Benjamin
was conceived in Toronto and born to us in Stockholm. Didi performed in the National Tour until she
was 7 1/2 months pregnant. As she started to show more and more, they began to
run out of ways to hide her! I'll never
forget meeting the King and Queen of Sweden and having the Queen ask about
Benjamin! Ben made his theatrical debut
in EVITA at age 5 in Cologne, Germany playing one of the kids at the
"Charity Concert" and later appeared in the "Santa Evita" number.
Didi home schooled him during the European Tours until he was almost 9 years
old. At that time, we'd read that the
social part of school becomes as important as the book learning, so we stopped
touring and returned to the Midwest to be closer to our families and be able to
give him a "normal" middle school and high school experience. He's now a sophomore Computer Science major
in college!
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Best, Rob Thanks Rob – I appreciate it!!! |
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