Evita: Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber dramatize the story of ambitious Argentine actress Eva Duarte from her struggling middle class origins to her rise as President Juan Peron's charismatic, if dubiously moral, wife. Set primarily in Buenos Aires and narrated by liberal revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the musical highlights Eva's manipulative use of men in the entertainment industry, the first Peron campaign for presidency in 1946, her international Rainbow Tour, the creation of the Eva Peron Foundation, her thwarted attempts to sit as vice president and her young death by an unnamed medical condition. Che serves throughout to counter balance the media-controlled view of Eva's rise as a saint-like populist figure to the poverty-stricken people, whom she dubs her “descamisados,” the shirtless ones. Opening in the 1978, Evita won both the Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Musical.

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