Audiences at Aberdeen’s Tivoli are “in for a treat” with AOC Productions’ take on the iconic musical Evita.
“Evita is a show I’ve always gone back to, for the simple reason that it’s got some of the best lyrics in musical theatre,” says Aaron Thom, who is directing AOC Productions’ version of the famous Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical about Argentina’s former first lady at a time of political turmoil at the Tivoli Theatre next week.
“They’re better than poetry,” he continues. “The way Tim Rice has constructed a huge story that covers Eva Perón as a nobody at the age of 15, all the way up to meeting (Argentine president) Juan Perón and then her death at 33, it covers a lot in a short space of time. The storytelling is all in the lyrics, the work is already done for us, but we need to make it clear.”
Formerly Aberdeen Opera Company, AOC is a local amateur company, but it’s one with a long history in Aberdeen. The company has been in existence since 1940.
Aaron first saw Evita when he was 9 years old
“Aberdeen Opera Company changed its name more than a decade ago, when it was realised there wasn’t the appetite locally to keep doing operettas and Gilbert and Sullivan,” says Thom.
“It began to do more and more musicals, which led to the name change. AOC has retained part of the Aberdeen Opera Company, though, so people still kind of know us as that.”
A ”true Aberdonian” who was born, went to school and went to university in the city, and who is now an academic in the field of art history, Thom himself is an example of the way amateur theatre can give people a sense of creative release in their own lives. A performer with the company as an undergraduate, he left in 2012, then returned as assistant director on the first post-COVID production Calendar Girls a decade later, and as director on last year’s Me and My Girl.
“I first saw Evita when I was nine, with Marty Webb in 1996 at His Majesty’s Theatre,” says Thom. “Every morning as I went to school, I saw this iconic black-and-white poster outside HMT, and I was intrigued by it, sitting in the car wondering what this stamp-like image of Eva Perón with a halo behind her was. I begged my Mum and my Nana to take me to see it.”
‘It seemed epic and big’
As a five-year-old, Thom had already seen Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at the Palladium, and although he understood very little of their plots, each show helped him fall in love with musical theatre.
“I remember sitting in the balcony for Evita,” says Thom. “We were far back, but it seemed like a very big show, and I liked how there was a person who spoke to the audience – Che, the narrator. At nine I didn’t understand the story, but I remember crowds of people, it seemed epic and big.
“The story in my family is that I sat and never flinched, my eyes never left the stage. You can take people to the theatre and you never know how they’re going to react to what they’re watching, but even at nine, you can be captured by something that remains a part of you. It’s been with me ever since.”
Thom will be working with musical director Tim Tricker, who is conducting an 18-piece orchestra, and conductor Sarah MacNay. His cast features 31 people aged from 17 up to their sixties, plus five children.
“It’s good for people of all ages to be together and to work and interact,” he says. “It also makes a show look believable if you have people of the right age playing the characters. There’s a very big pool of talent within Aberdeen’s amateur theatre groups, and the Tivoli is a perfect venue, a 500-seat theatre that has intimacy but still feels grand.”
‘One of the great roles in musical theatre’
Thom explains more about the casting of the show. “Jennifer Brown is playing Eva and Callum Bell is playing Che,” he says. “Che in this version is like the original version, played as Che Guevara. Eva Perón and Che Guevara never met in real life, but it’s like Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I – they met on film and on stage, but never in real life. As a director, I deliberately made sure Eva and Che never actually touch, because in my mind, Che is Eva’s conscience as well as the narrator. Eva’s sense of self-doubt is there, and he embodies that.
“Jennifer is extremely diverse as an actress. To be Eva Perón, you need to be an actress, a singer and a dancer, and Jennifer absolutely embodies that cliche of the ‘triple threat’. Eva is probably one of the great roles in musical theatre, and she has so much to do in it, she has even more to sing than Maria in The Sound of Music. You need somebody who believably can go from 15 to 33, and Jennifer can do that.”
‘You won’t have seen Evita staged this way’
Why would he recommend this particular production to an audience? “If you’ve seen Evita before, you won’t have seen Evita staged in this way,” says Thom.
“The orchestra is going to be very impressive, it does justice to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, but it’s a simple, stripped-back show. It’s certainly not a minimalist concert production, but by the nature of Evita, it doesn’t have huge, sweeping sets. The scene changes are done very stylishly and seamlessly, I think audiences will be in for a treat.”
Evita by AOC Productions is at the Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen, from Wednesday, May 29 to Saturday, June 1.
See aberdeenperformingarts.com for tickets and aocproductions.co.uk for more information.
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