As a chamber musical, 'Evita' gains clarity, intimacy and a thrilling Che Guavera

Jeremy Trager (from left) Chris Damiano and Maggie Portman. Middle: Portman. Bottom: Damiano and Portman.  

The first time we saw Evita, most of the cast of Theo Ubique’s staging of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical were infants at the oldest. Sigh. Surely 1981 couldn’t have been that long ago. Almost 30 years later, we’ve seen Evita 13 times. Directed by Fred Anzevino, Theo Ubique’s staging manages to redefine the piece from opulent, cast-of-hundreds spectacle to small but mighty chamber musical.

In the uber-intimate confines of the No Exit Café, Evita, Che and all the rest of the Argentines who figure in the story are close enough for the audience to touch. Performing between tightly packed tables and on a stage the size of a closet, a cast of 10 depicts an entire country of generals, peasants, union activists and upper-crust snobs. It’s an amazing feat of creative blocking, choreography and quick-change artistry: If you happened to walk in to the No Exit on an off night, you’d swear the place could barely accommodate a dozen diners at once, never mind the singing, dancing machinations of a full-blooded musical. (The quarters are so close that Theo Ubique’s 2006 award for improving the quality of life in Rogers Park is perched on a stand in the venue’s bathroom.)

The actors arrive two hours before the “curtain” (there actually is none) and go to work as waitstaff to dinner theater patrons. At intermission, they serve dessert. After the curtain call, they bus the tables and collect the checks. Just try foisting that arrangement on your average Broadway in Chicago cast. This up close and personal, Evita gains a clarity that isn’t possible in a traditional venue.

You hear every word and you see every nuanced expression in the story of a woman whose life was a triumph of sex over sexism.

Born dirt-poor and unable to afford the luxury of conventional morality, Ava Duarte coolly leveraged her sexual assets to become Argentina’s first lady Evita Peron. “Better to win by admitting my sin than to lose, with a halo,” she sings in Act II. Let the upper-crust of Argentina dismiss her as a loathsome, power-hungry slut, Our Lady of the Backstreet Gutter Theatricals was declared a Saint by the millions of “shirtless ones” she captivated with smoke, mirrors and shameless sex appeal.

From not-so naïve teenage seductress to Fascist glamazon, Evita is a role that demands herculean endurance. And it is also a role that Maggie Portman didn’t fully inhabit opening night. Losing power in both the upper and lower reaches of Webber’s score, Portman didn’t start to truly embody the ruthlessly sensual Ava Duarte Peron until the first act finale. On her first meeting with the tango singer Magaldi (an appropriately oily Michael Wheelright), Portman overdoes the naïve, breathless girlishness, giggling over the gift of a rose like smitten sorority sister. This isn’t the behavior of a calculating woman.

Portman gets better as the musical winds on, but this “Evita” belongs to Che, played with a lion-like grace and menace by Chris Damiano. He makes Webber’s treacherous rhythms and Tim Rice’s emotionally demanding lyrics look easy. An accomplished acoustic guitarist, he adds a lovely, unexpected layer of additional melancholy accompanying “Another Suitcase in Another Hall,” (sung with poignancy by Jenny Lamb as Peron’s pre-Evita mistress.) Begging on behalf of the forgotten poor (“Excuse me Evita, but fine as those sentiments sound/little has changed for us peasants down here on the ground”), he provides a haunting moral core to the production.

The other two major presences here are Jeremy Trager’s Juan Peron and Brenda Didier’s resourceful choreography. In “Art of the Possible,” that deadly game of musical chairs among would-be dictators, Trager establishes Juan as a political dark star of few scruples beyond those required to preserve his luxurious lifestyle. Juan Peron might be happy sipping cocktails in exile, but he’s more than willing to go along with his wife’s plans for world domination.

Choreographer Didier proves yet again a master of small spaces and limited casts. With the exception of Lamb, it’s clear that the ensemble is a group of singing actors first and dancers far second. Didier’s choreography plays to their capabilities as well as the story, borrowing from previous productions (the snooty mincing moves of the Ava-hating aristocrats) and putting her own stamp on things (the lewd outrage of Juan’s generals in “Peron’s Latest Flame”).

The production is anchored in a fine live band – an amazing feat of logistics and sound (kudos to musical director Ryan Brewster) given the space constraints of the No Exit.

Say what you like about Webber’s bombast and repetitive orchestrations – “Evita” holds up well three decades after its 1979 premiere. Indeed, it has a bizarre, unsatisfying ending that’ll have you Googling “Evita, corpse, disappearance” when you get home, but up until that final line of dialogue, Evita is wholly compelling. As shaped by Anzevino, it offers yet more proof that Theo Ubique is one of the Off-Loop theater scene’s absolute treasures.