Like "Jesus Christ Superstar," Tim Rice and Andrew LloydWebber's "Evita" … is history seen as a form of show business. Since Eva Peron was more directly related to show biz than Jesus, one would expect the Rice-Lloyd-Webber material to be more pointed than their earlier show. Alas, it is only more banal.

Rice's lyrics have the naive outrage of Sixties radical kids…. Occasionally Rice achieves an old-fashioned musical comedy cleverness…. More often they merely convey rhetoric with no sense of style, euphony or grace.

Lloyd-Webber's music frequently sounds like mis-hummed fragments of familiar tunes…. Most of the music is characterless, often singsong—perhaps it was kept deliberately simple to guarantee we would be able to grasp Rice's banal lyrics. (pp. 154-55)

There have been reports "Evita" has been modified since its London production, where there was concern the fascistic heroine was somehow being glorified. If she had been, it...