If you sus­pect that I’m not an actu­al, fully qual­i­fied review­er, you’d be cor­rect. How­ever, in this par­tic­u­lar instance, I feel I have some expert­ise hav­ing watched the movie Evita, star­ring my pal Madonna.

Armed with this extens­ive know­ledge, and hav­ing wiki­pe­di­aed Eva Per­on (did you know Juan Per­on popped her corpse in his din­ing room 20 years after her death? You’re wel­come), I trot­ted along to the show at the Opera House.

It was open­ing night and the theatre was abuzz. The Opera House is such a spe­cial space and it was fun watch­ing all the youth get­ting drunk over at Te Aro Park from the gor­geous bal­cony. It’s a loc­al pro­duc­tion, put on by the Pori­rua Little Theatre and Amici Pro­duc­tions. The audi­ence was filled with friends and fam­ily, the woman next to me proudly told me her daugh­ter was in the show (she was very good!).

Onto the show! It all starts with a bit of a spoil­er, the death of Eva Per­on is announced and from there on the show pos­it­ively rocks along. I can see why people like Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. They’re quite clev­er. The show was seam­less and pacy and rich. Giv­en my entire expert­ise is based on Madonna and Ant­o­nio Bander­as and Jonath­an Pryce, none of whom can sing that well (sorry Madonna! I love you! I’m com­ing to see you any­way!) I was blown away by the voices in the show. There was­n’t one bung sing­er. Eva (played by Heath­er Wil­cock) sang like a frick­ing song­bird, simply amaz­ing. Her act­ing was A++ also. Che Guevara, the nar­rat­or (Mat­thew Pike) was jaunty as hell and I could listen to his lovely voice forever. Shout out to Katie Evans too, who played Per­on’s mis­tress and whose singing was so gor­geous I had to go home and listen to her song ‘Anoth­er Suit­case in Anoth­er Hall’ with the kids.

I think you prob­ably get the gist. I loved the show. I loved the set and the cos­tumes and I had a wee weep because they have CHILDREN BEING WONDERFUL.

And dare I say it, it was approx­im­ately 1000 times bet­ter than the movie.

See it at the Opera House until Novem­ber 21st.