PELLOW to play CHE at The Edinburgh Playhouse (Part 2)

Now, where was I?

That's right: critiquing Evita for its failure to be a revolutionary action. Sigh. I wouldn't mind, but I go against

my own principles with something like that. Not only am I imposing a value system on art that may or may not dovetail with the artist's intent, I am denying my belief that every time someone experiences art, the world gets slightly better.

What I really doing is hiding my dislike for Wet Wet Wet behind a façade of theory. If I apply the 'Holy Moment' to Evita, I get a far more interesting result.

The idea of Marti Pellow playing Che becomes a little lesson in levels of perception. On the literal level, it is a celebrity playing a revolutionary: on the metaphorical level, this becomes an interesting juxtaposition, a symbol, perhaps, of the relationship between politics and fame. Che Guevara himself is a kind of celebrity revolutionary and, although this is not that Che, I don't think they took the name by accident.

Indeed, the presence of a famous singer playing a revolutionary is, in itself, a piece of casting that works both commercially (people are going to want to see the man who sung that number one about feeling it in his fingers) and on a meta level.

My original critique takes everything at face value, sees the performance as complete in itself and fails to recognise that there is a context to Evita. Unlike The Spectacle as defined in my fancy books - in which everything is the spectacle, and nothing can escape - this musical is part of several threads. There's the thread about the musical in popular culture, the narrative around the use of celebrities in theatre, the status of The Playhouse as a venue... thanks to Marti Pellow, there's a bonus theme, discussing the relationship between rock'roll (okay, pop) and musical theatre.

I'm still not sure whether I like Lloyd Webber's tunes, but I am less likely to be moaning about the politics of Evita.