Don't Cry For Me Argentina: How Evita's 2025 London Revival Shines a Spotlight on a Controversial Figure - and Makes Zegler a Star
- Languages on a Plate
- Jul 13
- 14 min read
Updated: Aug 30
Just over a week after the press night for Jamie Lloyd's 2025 revival of Evita in London, and I still haven't quite recovered.
While I have the insane good fortune to attend many West End press nights thanks to a good friend being a theatre critic, Evita stood out head and shoulders above anything I had ever seen.
Naturally, with its focus on a Latin American figure, I was always going to have a perhaps stronger vested interest in the production than I would for anything else I've had the good fortune to watch. However, beyond its subject matter, it is so rare that a performer and a moment seem to stand out as something more. Something to pause and reflect upon. Someone to take note of as announcing themselves as a bonafide star.
Before I go into the history of Evita, the person, it would be remiss to not stress that Rachel Zegler's performance as the the lead in the eponymous musical is a moment that will go down in history. Truly, a star was born on the London Palladium's stage, and I am sure following this theatrical run, she will win every applicable Olivier Award going and be the first name on anyone's lips for any future musical booking. She really was that incredible.
While this blog post is linked to the idea of a review of the current London show, it is more a deep-dive into the person and the culture around her (and my own experiences in Argentina), so if you stumbled on this page looking for a theatre review, it should suffice in saying, go and watch it. 5 stars. The best thing in London of the 2020s decade so far. Otherwise I have more detail of the production in the (very) latter part of this post.
The First Time I Met Evita (Sort Of)
You could say my personal connection to Evita began by accident. When I was 13, I was incredibly fortunate to travel to Latin America for the first time. Curiously, my parents chose to take me and my sister to the Cono Sur region (namely: Argentina, Uruguay and Chile), instead of where we have direct family heritage (Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador), but it was a visit that perhaps shaped my being more than any other. And most definitely planted the seed for the culture-focused aspect of this website.
Our first port-of-call on this trip-of-a-lifetime was the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires. It left an instant mark on me. I was struck by the city's energy, its friendly people and most importantly for a 13 year-old, its incredible food (I became somewhat obsessive about media lunas - an Argentinian take on croissants - but with a sugar glaze).
The city also felt like its buildings were trying to tell the deep, complex history of the city, and one place did this more than any other, the Recoleta Cemetery.
Despite growing up in North London, near the notorious Highgate Cemetery, I had never seen anything close to the magnitude of Recoleta. Perhaps the contrast between the two cemeteries could be boiled down to a difference of Protestantism versus Catholicism (individual burials vs family crypts/mausoleums; less religious iconography vs images of saints and the Madonna; less of a connection to the living vs a continued relationship with the dead). That said, this comparison still doesn't do justice to the sheer magnitude of the Recoleta Cemetery. It feels like its own sprawling city of the dead in the heart of Buenos Aires, with its own streets flanked by mausoleums and statues.
As we wandered through the little "streets", we came across a large crowd gathered at one of these mausoleums. Little did I know that it was exactly where my parents had intended on taking us, the Duarte family tomb, where Eva Perón (Evita) was buried. People were queueing (something bizarrely Argentinians do better than the English) to place flowers and touch some of the plaques. There were even some people sobbing into their handkerchiefs. Again, I must state, as a 13 year-old, I wasn't aware of the history or the magnitude of the person.
When we reached the front of the queue, I tried to decipher (with my Year 7 Spanish) what the numerous plaques were saying. Although, naturally, I didn't have the linguistic level at that time, it was quite confusing from a chronological point of view as the numerous plaques had different dates on them. With a bit more inspection, it became apparent that various political groups placed plaques to commemorate key anniversaries. Despite this, it was distinctly unmistakable that this was the grave of someone who had died a long time ago, which made the emotional outpouring more striking.
The significance of this person, or rather the way people still clearly felt about her so long after her death, stayed with me. After bombarding my parents with questions about who she was and her role in Argentinian politics, I ended up putting a photo of one of the plaques from her tomb on my bedroom wall. A strange choice for a 13-year-old, admittedly, even if it was just one of around twenty pictures from that trip that I’d stuck up. I continued to pester my parents with questions for the rest of our time in Argentina. I suppose it speaks to the impression the raw emotion I’d seen from complete strangers at her grave had left on me.
Anglo-Argentine Relations and a Second Visit
On that same first trip to South America in 2006, I was also made aware of the not-so-smooth Anglo-Argentine relationship. Curiously, it wasn't an Argentine who informed me about the Falklands War, but a Uruguayan. On a short stay in Montevideo in Uruguay, I started a conversation with some workers at a museum (after asking where the toilet was - a good use of my beginners Spanish), and I was wearing an Argentina football shirt (after all I am football mad, and it was a World Cup summer). They were shocked, upon finding out I was English, that I was wearing an Argentinian shirt. They quizzed me if I hated the country, to which I replied I loved it. Later that day, my parents gave me a brief overview of the Falklands War, and I started to have a few seeds planted for understanding aspects of Latin American politics.
These seeds were well-and-truly established by the time I returned to Argentina at the end of my year abroad in 2014. When I crossed over the border from Chile, my first major stop-off point was the city of Salta (about 1,500km from the capital). By this point, I was aware enough of certain historical events to look at certain things through a different lens.
In Salta, there was very little visible acknowledgement of the Falklands War, unlike what I would later experience in Buenos Aires, but more on that later. At the time, in the summer of 2014, Kirchner's government had been using their "Malvinas" claim (the Spanish for the Falklands) as a political rallying cry to distract from the severe economic consequences her administration had created. The rhetoric had reached such a level that the Argentinian national football team received a fine for displaying a "las Malvinas son argentinas" banner before a friendly match against Slovenia in the build-up to their World Cup campaign (FIFA doesn't allow political slogans from teams).
However, what Salta did display very visibly was the heart-wrenching situation of the "desparecidos" (political voices who were "disappeared" by the Military Dictatorship that followed Perón's second presidency - after removing his widow, Isabel, in a military coup -more on this later in this post). In the city centre there were hundreds of metres of bunting, each strip bearing the faces people who were disappeared by the Military Dictatorship. The sheer number of faces was overwhelming and once again underlined the recent pain etched in the Argentine collective psyche.
Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of that bunting (many of my photos from that period were sadly lost in a laptop reset to factory settings incident), but to highlight the significance of this historic moment on the Argentinian population's psyche you can see the picture below of a march by the "Mothers of the Disappeared" (madres de los desparecidos) that my dad took in February 2025 in Buenos Aires.
As I continued my overland journey from Salta to Buenos Aires, I stopped off at a British-run gaucho ranch in the pampas. The family running it were second-generation British-Argentinians, and while they were more than happy to speak about Argentina’s seemingly never-ending economic instability, they were notably reluctant to mention the Falklands. What they did make clear, though, was just how much of Argentina, particularly outside of Buenos Aires, had been physically built by the British. It’s natural to think that the Italians (and Spaniards) “built” Argentina, and there’s obviously truth to that when it comes to mass immigration and cultural traits. But the British were crucial when it came to infrastructure and industry: the railway lines were laid by British companies, their world-famous beef is Aberdeen Angus (descended from British cattle), and Patagonia still has a Welsh-speaking community (one of the largest outside of the UK).
This backdrop only added to the mixed signals I was receiving about the Anglo-Argentine relationship. In Salta, the focus had been on the desparecidos and the horrors of the Dictatorship, but by the time I had arrived in Buenos Aires, the dominant public messaging was all about the Falklands. Graffiti, posters, and slogans referencing “Las Malvinas” cropped up on almost every corner. As a result, I began to avoid saying I was British to anyone who didn’t need to see my passport. But even that backfired. When a taxi driver asked where I was from and I replied “Ireland,” he told me he didn’t know much about it, but that he loved English music and literature. It was one of those moments that made me die a little inside. The awkwardness I’d tried to pre-empt wasn’t there. If anything, it was another quiet reminder that people can separate politics from people, and a reminder of just how culturally connected the Brits and Argentinians are.
Eva Perón: From Radio Star to Political Icon
So, back to Evita, and how her historic legacy links everything I have mentioned above (trust me, it's not as tenuous as you might have thought).
Eva María Duarte de Perón was born in 1919 in Junín, Argentina. She rose from poverty and obscurity to become a successful radio and film actress in Buenos Aires. In 1944, aged 25, she met Colonel Juan Domingo Perón at a charity fundraiser. They married the following year, and in 1946, Perón was elected president. By then, she had already become more than a ceremonial spouse.
Perón’s presidency saw the birth of Peronismo, a populist movement that fused nationalism, welfare reform, and organised labour with authoritarian controls and a cult of personality. He nationalised major industries, expanded workers’ rights, and boosted wages. At the same time, he censored opposition, restricted the press, and elevated both himself and Evita as symbolic saviours of the people. She embraced the spotlight, not to soften his politics, but to sharpen her own platform.
In 1947, she led the charge for women’s suffrage, personally visiting Argentina’s provinces and delivering fiery speeches that brought millions of new voices to the ballot box. That same year, she created the Fundación Eva Perón, which built hospitals, schools, and orphanages, distributing aid directly to the poor. She regularly visited working-class communities, shaking hands with the descamisados, the so-called "shirtless", a term used to describe the urban poor who formed the backbone of Peronist support.
To many, she was a saint; to others, especially the middle and upper classes, she was a political performer dressed in haute couture. But even her fiercest critics could not erase the depth of her impact on Argentina’s social landscape.
Evita sadly died of cervical cancer in 1952, aged just 33 and just three years later, Juan Perón was overthrown in a military coup. Evita's story, didn't end with her death, but almost became what it is today after her death.
The Body, the Myth, and the Exile
Following her death, Evita’s body was embalmed with the intent of placing it in a grand public monument. The preservation of her remains echoed the Catholic practice of enshrining saints, a gesture that resonated with Argentina’s working-class religiosity. But when the military took power in 1955, they viewed her tomb as too politically dangerous. Her body was seized and concealed. For almost two decades, it was transported under aliases, kept in secret, and even rumoured to have been buried under a cinema in Milan. Soldiers assigned to guard her coffin spoke of strange occurrences like, blood seeping from the casket. These stories fuelled her legend and elevated her further into the realm of the mythical for the Argentinian working classes.
In 1971, her body was returned to Juan Perón while in exile in Madrid, where he kept it in his home until his political comeback. He was allowed to return to Argentina in 1973 under an agreement to help restore stability amid rising civil unrest. After his return to power, Evita’s body was finally reinterred in Recoleta Cemetery (in the same tomb where I saw her), buried beneath reinforced concrete and steel to prevent any future desecration.
By the time of Juan Perón's return, Peronismo had changed dramatically from what it was in Evita's life. In its first incarnation, it had stood for worker dignity, state-led welfare, and economic nationalism. Its second phase was something more volatile. Upon his return, Perón made his third wife, Isabel, vice president. When he died in 1974, Isabel assumed the presidency. Without her husband’s political skill or Evita’s public appeal, her government rapidly lost control. Economic crisis intensified, and political violence surged. She was accused of complicity with the far-right Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (Triple A), a paramilitary death squad that targeted left-wing dissidents and journalists.
In 1976, the military seized power again. This time, it was not a transition but a descent into terror. The Dictatorship that followed kidnapped, tortured, and killed thousands. These victims, known as the desaparecidos (as mentioned above), were often young people suspected of opposing the regime. Many were never seen again. The same political machinery that Evita once used to deliver aid and uplift the poor had, by the late 1970s, been repurposed into an instrument of silence and fear. Her legacy of social justice now sat uncomfortably alongside a regime that criminalised dissent and left thousands of families searching for answers.
The British Lens: Rice, Lloyd Webber, and the Power to Repackage
Evita’s story was brought to the world stage not by an Argentine, but by two Brits. In 1973, Tim Rice heard a BBC radio documentary about her life and became fascinated by the contradictions: working-class icon and first lady, saint and strategist. Alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber, he turned her rise and fall into a concept album in 1976 and a West End musical in 1978. It was fast-paced, narratively clean, and unapologetically British in its lens. and that’s where some of the tension lies (it's worth noting that this is before the Falklands War).
The show takes a complex political history and streamlines it for mass appeal. Peronism becomes a backdrop; Evita becomes an emblem. It’s not that the musical is wrong, it’s that it simplifies, reframes, and dramatises through a distinctly foreign gaze. For many Argentinians, this version feels both familiar and frustrating. It flattens local nuance into spectacle, turning a layered national legacy into a global myth.
That was only amplified in 1996 when Madonna starred as Evita in Alan Parker’s Hollywood adaptation. An American pop icon playing an Argentinian political figure, directed by a British filmmaker and financed by a US studio, sealed Evita’s status as a product of Western cultural machinery. Her life had become exportable content, filtered through British and American aesthetics, values, and voices.
Che: Confusing Historic Narrator or Argentinian Everyman?
Following the discussion of Evita as a British export, the choice of narrator offers another example of foreign artistic licence in reshaping Argentina’s political history. Tim Rice has confirmed that the character was loosely inspired by Che Guevara, although the historical overlap is questionable. Guevara’s formative motorcycle journey, documented in The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey, began in 1952, the same year Evita died. The two never met. For some, this deliberate mismatch is a bold narrative move, using Guevara’s later revolutionary image to critique Evita’s populism. For others, it feels like a lazy shortcut that clouds the actual timeline for the sake of symbolism.
As a Spanish-language learning website, I would also be remiss not to point out that che holds everyday meaning in Rioplatense Spanish. It’s a common way of saying “dude” or “mate”. Seen through this lens, the character is not just a reference to Guevara, but also a nod to the average Argentine citizen. He becomes both a symbol of rebellion and a voice of the people. This double reading has sparked years of debate: some see him as an insightful narrator holding Evita to account, while others find the symbolism too muddled to land.
Zegler’s Performance and *that* Balcony Scene
And now, back to the London 2025 show, again. From the moment Rachel Zegler walked on stage, it was obvious this wasn’t just another West End debut. This was the arrival of a performer stepping fully into her power. Her voice was extraordinary, but it was the steel beneath the softness that made it unforgettable. She didn’t just portray Evita; she embodied her contradictions. Zegler's Evita was seductive, calculating, luminous, and relentless. Every glance, every note, every calculated pause felt loaded with intent.
Then came the much-awaited Don’t Cry for Me Argentina. The moment the camera panned from her balcony out into the street and revealed around a thousand people gathered outside the theatre, the entire audience inhaled. It wasn’t just clever staging; it was genuinely jaw-dropping. You could feel the weight of it. A Latina actress (Zegler has heritage from Colombia on her mother's side) in central London commanding that level of attention, not just within the theatre, but spilling out into the city. It was spectacle.
That context matters. Zegler has faced months of online backlash in the US for speaking out on issues of race, misogyny, and political hypocrisy. And yet, here she was, playing one of the most politically polarising women in Latin American history. It was impossible not to see the link. A woman celebrated for her voice, but attacked the moment she dares use it off-script. The parallels with Evita were everywhere. Zegler’s very presence in the role challenged the traditional optics of power and made the story feel alive again.
And then, of course, speaking about crticial voices, there was Piers Morgan. After the performance, he tweeted that it was “one of the best I’ve ever seen” but couldn’t help adding that Zegler should “leave the woke nonsense out of it.” The irony was hard to miss. He’d just sat through a show that confronts class, gender and the construction of political myth, led by a woman who has become a lightning rod for exactly those conversations, and still came away only praising the surface. Applaud the performance, ignore the point. Celebrate the star, dismiss the voice. It was a perfect, if unintentional, echo of Evita herself.
And that’s why it felt like so many of the A-lister Hollywood names in the audience had flown over not just for a press night, but for a moment. This wasn’t just another show. It was a cultural line in the sand. The standing ovations weren't just about hitting the high notes. They were about a woman, both onstage and off, refusing to be silenced.
More than anything, Zegler’s performance reminded us of what made Evita so divisive in the first place. Not her ambition, but her refusal to apologise for it. Not her style, but the political substance beneath it. Zegler didn’t just revive the role. She reframed it, with all the weight of what it still means for a woman to stand on a balcony and demand to be seen.
Why Evita Still Matters
Following on from the significance of Zegler’s role just mentioned, Evita still matters in 2025 because it says something about who gets to tell stories, and who gets remembered. It’s not just about the past, it’s about the present. In an era where politics runs on optics and charisma, her rise as a working-class woman who used performance to break into elite spaces feels strikingly familiar. These days, people use film, television and even reality shows to do the same. Evita understood that image wasn’t a distraction from politics; it was politics.
Argentina itself is no stranger to this kind of theatrical politics. With Milei’s presidency, we’ve seen another charismatic populist come to power, appealing to frustration and identity over structure or detail. Post-Covid backlash against globalisation, the rise of mis and disinformation, and a growing mistrust of institutions have created the perfect conditions for figures who feel like characters. Just as Evita blurred the line between sincerity and performance, modern politics often rewards those who can do the same.
Outside of the political sphere, the place she holds in Argentina’s national identity is hard to miss. From the giant black-outlined mural of her on the Ministry of Social Development building in Buenos Aires (pictured) to the nightly re-enactments of her balcony speech in tourist tango shows, Evita has become more than a historical figure. In La Boca (a notoriously working-class neighbourhood of Buenos Aires), she stands frozen in time beside Maradona and Carlos Gardel on a painted balcony, waving like a national holy trinity (pictured). Sport, politics, and art all come together in that image. Each figure rose from the working class, each became an icon, and each has been commercialised to death. But the power of their stories still cuts through the gloss.
Evita’s legacy is still being fought over, reshaped, and re-performed. That’s what makes the revival feel alive. If you can, see it while it runs. And if not, Zegler’s version of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina was released just this past Friday, 11 July, so you can enjoy that! Spotify link here.
