Special to The Telegram

A huge snake of citizens following the funeral cortege of Eva Peron in 1952 is the beginning and end of Evita. In between is a series of musical flashbacks illustrating the Argentine actress’s two-decade rise to fame, fortune and political influence by means of a parade of increasingly influential lovers, culminating in Juan Peron. In the Argentine colonel she helped become president of the country, she finds the vain, complacent, not-too-bright instrument of her burning ambition for public recognition.

The monster chorus of the pop-opera represents the citizens of Argentina — soldiers, socialites, children, but most notably the underclass, besotted by the dictator’s consort. Through the fabulous success of Little Eva, the dispossessed can enjoy their pipe-dream of social and economic improvement. Adored and venerated, she is a low-born harbinger of Princess Di.

The anonymous masses are important because Eva, the power behind the presidential throne, knows how to mobilize them — not to improve the lot of the shirtless ones, but to feather the Peron nest, filling numbered bank accounts in Switzerland and bankrupting Argentina.

Evita offers a sharp-edged, sardonic analysis of an opportunistic political diva, mediated through the sensibility of Argentine-born revolutionary, Che Guevara — in military fatigues and trademark beret — who acts as presenter, narrator, commentator, even voyeur.

If Eva is the glamorous but corrupt anti-heroine, the voice of principle is Che Guevara, the Doubting Thomas of the extravaganza that is the Santa Eva Superstar Show. The show becomes a musical dialogue between the impassioned idealism of Che and the cynical pragmatism of Eva.

Evita makes no attempt to conceal its theatricality. Indeed, the theatricality of politics is right at the heart of the concept. Politics is a stage-managed show performed by matinee idols for the bemusement of a gullible public.

And, in deconstructing political life, the show also deconstructs theatrical artifice. The musical score is complex, unpredictable. The script is skeptical in its analysis of individual and collective motives. Sentiment is called on — but for openly exploitative purposes.

In the lead role, Damnhnait Doyle’s first rendition of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina is glorious and thrilling, breathy and passionate. And it is a deliberate act of crowd manipulation and is politically spellbinding. You know that. But the tears well up anyway. In the second act, when she does her dying reprise before a weeping, candle-holding crowd, the same thing happens. And is it equally true of the finale reprise, after Eva’s death, by a weeping young girl? Because in anatomizing the show biz of political control, Evita also anatomizes the devices of musical show biz. Repeatedly it refuses to allow facile responses; repeatedly it refuses to give us that big pause for applause; repeatedly it shows us how the trick is worked on the onstage crowd and then works it on us.

Lighting, costuming and choreography are colourful and dramatic, although the set is less highly finished.

With such a huge chorus, it is inevitable that some of them will sometimes end up simply standing around. But they are generally very well deployed and the sheer size of the crowd is visually and functionally impressive.

Among the principals, complementing the vivid, charismatic self-fashioning of Doyle’s Eva is Andrew Dale’s Che Guevara, whose angry dissent is sung with passion and authority. On the other side of the diva is the indolent ease and confidence of Michael Coady in the role of Juan Peron.