The New York Observer

Can nothing be done, once and for all, to get rid of Evita? Here it is again, worse than ever and revived on Broadway for no logical reason except to cash in on Ricky Martin’s fame as a pop star, just as the 1996 movie cashed in (without much success) on Madonna’s celebrity as a prehistoric Lady Gaga. Haven’t we outgrown this bloated extravaganza? Evita is not much of a show, and Eva Duarte Peron, in retrospect, isn’t exactly an original one-woman success story. Today the press sells Evitas for a dime a dozen. They keep the New York Post in business.

But, ah, the spicy meat-pie sturm und drang surrounding the rise and fall of the one from Argentina—an ambitious slut who slept her way up from lower-class country roots through a minor career as a third-rate radio actress to the loftier ranks of society, the military and politics, and became, at 26, the wife (and power behind the throne) of South American dictator Juan Peron. Ruthless and aggressive, she saw what she wanted and wasted no time taking it, emptying the coffers of the country she pretended to love and raping the peasants who adored her while they looked the other way. Today, they’d yell “You go, girl!” and give her a reality show. Read More