‘Evita’ Star James Olivas on Playing a New-Era Juan Perón, Political Parallels, and Puzzles
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It’s a new week at the London Palladium theater, where the Evita cast is collectively shaking off a bug. “We were really limping across the finish line this past week,” says James Olivas, who plays leading man Juan Perón. “We had every swing on and people doing split tracks, which we’ve never done before, just to get the show up and running. Everyone’s incredibly talented, so it worked out.”
To his point, the chaos was not in any way obvious to their audience. Reviews of Jamie Lloyd’s West End revival of Evita, the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice that first came to the stage in 1978, have highlighted the cast’s chemistry and kinetic energy. It’s a modern and adrenaline-spiking retelling of Argentina’s most famous first lady’s story—played by Rachel Zegler—with big rock numbers and Beyoncé-esque hair flips, slaloming through populist politics and celebrity worship. Opposite Zegler is Olivas, a stoic, sinister Perón—and, at 28, an unusually young actor for the role.
When we speak, just before call time and warm-ups, Olivas is a beaming, jokey antipode to his character. Diego Andres Rodriguez, who plays Che, waves in the background of our Zoom. (Rodriguez and Olivas share an apartment block in Camden, and a dressing room deep in the Palladium annals.) It’s both of their first times in the UK. “Every day off, we explore as much as we can,” says Olivas. They tried to pitch a trip to Brighton Pride to see headliner Mariah Carey, but couldn’t make it work; instead, they went for a Sunday roast at the Greyhound, walked around Kew Gardens, and had drinks in Richmond on the Thames. All the textbook tourist stuff was ticked off weeks into rehearsals.
Olivas grew up in Houston, Texas, before moving to Los Angeles for school and college. His focus on football, basketball, and water polo—and plans to eventually follow in his father’s footsteps to become a mechanical engineer—shifted after a knee injury, and being exposed to theater in LA. (Constantly hearing him sing in the shower eventually pushed his mom to push him into a community production of Ragtime.) “From then I did as much as I could,” Olivas says. “But I thought it was something I would do on the weekends outside of my reliable, steady, nine-to-five job.” His time in conservative Texas had also left him with “a lot of unlearning to do about what I could be.”
“In college, I stopped and thought, It’s theater or engineering. I took a leap of faith. So here we are, on the West End.”
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