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.