Act One of Evita begins in a cinema in Buenos Aires. The film is interrupted for the announcement that Eva Peron, first lady and spiritual leader of the nation, has died. The cinema setting transforms to a street funeral procession, with the narrator figure of Che criticising the mourners.
The show is then told in flash back form, with continued narration from Che. Eva Duarte is fifteen and becomes the local romantic entanglement of singer Agustin Magaldi, a B-list celebrity. Under pressure from Eva's family, and amidst jeers from Che, Magaldi reluctantly agrees to take Eva back to Buenos Aires with him.
Eva's aspirations lead her social climbing through a series of sexual liaisons with influential men. Radio stardom isn't enough for her, and at a charity concert for victims of an earthquake devastating San Juan, she sets her sights on Colonel Peron.
Peron and Eva decide that a relationship between them will be mutually beneficial to both parties. Eva ejects Peron's teenage girlfriend, and moves in. The Army strongly disapproves of the influence Eva has over Peron's life as it is clear even to them that she wants more than to just be his lover. The aristocracy is equally offended by the social and political stature Eva has obtained.
Peron senses the dangers of the political climate, and wistfully talks of going into exile as "all exiles are distinguished / more important, they're not dead." Eva talks him out of his defeatist attitude, and a new Argentina begins to take shape.
Act Two takes place after the marriage of Peron and Eva, and just after Peron has been elected president of Argentina. Eva makes her supposed heart felt speech to the masses, and becomes proclaimed a saint. She sets off on her Rainbow Tour of Europe, and meets with brilliant success at first. Then as, Che tells us, "she suddenly seemed to lose interest, she looked tired".
Unbeknownst to Eva, she is beginning to suffer from the fatal effects of cancer which will led to her death. Back in Argentina, she vigorously supports her charitable fund, which acquires money from the upper classes basically by force, and administers the funds to the poor in an erratic fashion. Che eventually confronts Eva about her less than pristine political philosophies, but she upbraids him at every turn justifying her actions.
Although trying to deny her illness, Eva is eventually forced to give in to her frail physical condition and submits to the army's pressures to withdraw from a bid to be Vice President.
As Eva is dying, a montage of previous events guides her through a reflection on her life, and her desire to have gotten all that she could at the expensive of a longer and more normal life. Eva dies and the embalmers preserve her body. Che tells us how a grand monument had been planned but never built, and that Eva's embalmed body "disappeared" for seventeen years.
"Oh What A Circus" is similar to Judas' "Heaven On Their Minds" in that it establishes where the character is coming from. Che is critical of everyone. He is critical of the mourners who have "all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night / falling over themselves to get all of the misery right". He is also critical of Eva, an "actress", who "let down" her people because she was not immortal -- a request that was "not much to ask for". It is Che who keeps trying to point out the problems with Eva's regime. "Waltz For Eva And Che" is a brilliant number showing the harder aspects to Eva's character, and yet drawing compassion for her as she collapses at the end. The whole show depicts Eva's cold ambition with slight humour, from her daring "I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You" to her correction from "We'll" to "You'll be handed power on a plate" when talking political strategies with Peron in "A New Argentina".
Lyrical quotes from Tim Rice's libretto for Evita
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