‘Evita,’ Starring Rachel Zegler, Is Heading to Broadway

“A reimagined”Avoid,” with Rachel Zegler portraying the Argentine first lady like a pop star, was a sensation last year in London, drawing crowds into the theater, and to the streets just outside it. Next year, the musical, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, is transferring to Broadway.

The show’s producers announced on Wednesday that this “Evita,” reconceived by British director Jamie Lloyd, would play at an unspecified Shubert theater next spring. Zegler, who earlier this month won an Olivier Award for her performance in the London run, she will reprise the role in New York.

There will be one key difference. In London, a signature element of the production was that, at each performance, Zegler sang the show’s best known song, “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” outdoors, from a theater balcony, for a crowd of nonpaying onlookers. The scene (which ticket holders might see on a display) had symbolic worth — Eva Peronthough in the end highly effective and rich, usually professed her solidarity with the working poor.

But in New York, that feat will not be repeated. “When we started discussing a New York production, it became apparent that our Palladium staging of ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’ would not be possible,” Lloyd said in a statement. “I am really excited to explore a new idea, made especially for Broadway.”

Why outdoors in London and not in New York? The production did not offer a specific explanation, but in recent months Lloyd Webber has been clear that he believes the level of gun violence in the United States made the outdoor scene too risky. “The one thing that absolutely cannot happen is what we did in London on the balcony,” he told USA Today last month. “We cannot do this in New York. I imply, one thing terrible might occur. We have gun legal guidelines in Britain.”

Other concerns arose, too, including the complexity of tempting large crowds of spectators to assemble regularly along a congested Times Square street. “There are many creative and practical considerations,” Lloyd said in a telephone interview. “There’s not one reason why we’re doing it differently — there’s many many different considerations.”

Lloyd said he already has a new concept for staging the scene, but that he’s not ready to share it with the public.

“Evita,” which was conceived as a rock opera, initially opened in London in 1978. That manufacturing, directed by Hal Princeran for practically eight years. Prince also directed the primary Broadway manufacturing, which opened in 1979received seven Tony Awards, together with for greatest musical, and ran till 1983. The present was revived on Broadway as soon as earlier than, in 2012. In 1996 it was additionally tailored into a moviestarring Madonna.

Next year’s revival will be produced by Lloyd’s production arm, the Jamie Lloyd Company and, Lloyd Webber’s production team, Lloyd Webber Harrison Musicals, which is led by Michael Harrison.

Zegler, 24, a New Jersey native, had her breakout position in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 movie adaptation of “West Side Story.” She has labored steadily since, and in 2024 she starred in a Broadway manufacturing of “Romeo + Juliet.”

Lloyd, 45, has built his reputation with radically rethought revivals of classic works by Pinter, Ibsen, Sondheim, Lloyd Webber and Shakespeare, among others. I have directed the Tony-winning 2024 Broadway revival of Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard” (which featured one of many lead actors singing the title tune while walking backstage and through Shubert Alley) in addition to this season’s Broadway revival of Beckett’sWaiting for Godot“and this fall he is planning to bring to Broadway a revival of Shakespeare’s”Much Ado About Nothing,” which he beforehand directed in London.

This production is Lloyd’s second go at “Evita” — he previously directed the show at Regent’s Park Open Air Theater in London in 2019.

“It is, I think, one of the all-time great musicals, and I’m a huge fan of the score, and it’s a fascinating character,” Lloyd said. “The puzzle is the way you reinvent it, as a result of Hal Prince’s manufacturing was iconic. Part of the enjoyable of it’s the way you reinvent each second.”