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1 " When I talked with Patti LuPone at a San Francisco coffeehouse, she said "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" wasn't a showstopper originally. The role had a big impact on her stage persona. She says playgoers didn't make a distinction between Perón and LuPone (whose names even sound similar.), "
― , Showstoppers!: The Surprising Backstage Stories of Broadway's Most Remarkable Songs
2 " When I talked with Patti LuPone at a San Francisco coffeehouse, she said "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" wasn't a showstopper originally. The role had a big impact on her stage persona. She says playgoers didn't make a distinction between Perón and LuPone (whose names even sound similar.). She believes that her tough-cookie reputation-enhanced years later after she snatched a smartphone out a playgoer's hand-is largely due to being Evita, whom she reluctantly tried out for Kevin Kline, then her boyfriend talked her into going for it "
3 " The show got mixed review, but LuPone was beloved by the critics, though she revealed in a 2007 interview in the New York Times, "'Evita' was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through the part. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage, but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee. "
4 " Evita was loved by the lower classes for her rise from poverty as an illegitimate child and possibly legit prostitute to radio star and actress. Yet she was despised by the wealthy, who considered her crass, crude, Machiavellian white-trash tyrant, a Hispanic Lady Macbeth-not to mention a Nazi sympathizer. "
5 " The idea for the musical album began when Rice heard a radio play about Eva Perón in 1973. He tried the idea out on Lloyd Webber. Evita's appeal- a puta with a heart of steel was undeniable "A glamorous sexy super-bitch who swayed the fortunes of an entire nation", To quote Webber's biographer Gerald McKnight. Evita was a sexier, needier Margaret Thatcher. At the time there was a miner's strike in England that paralyzed the country, and Lloyd Webber said, "Things were getting pretty ugly and we found a kind of parallel in the story of Evon Perón... a cautionary tale of how a liberal democracy is a fragile flower that can be overturned by an extremist. "