All set for Evita

from Weekend 1

from Weekend 1

the dialogue is sung and the entire soundtrack was recorded in advance of the movie going before the cameras, reversing one of the basic rules of film making. The entire soundtrack was recorded over four months in a London studio last autumn.

"We did 400 hours of recording and I was there for every minute of it," Parker says. "My screenplay was inspired by the original album and. I ignored the theatrical manifestation of

Evita. As I wrote the script, in order to tell the [story cinematically, certain things needed toe be re adjusted within the score. That was always part of the arrangement I had with Tim and Andrew. New lyrics had to be written and more music had to be written, and as a work it had to be completely and utterly brought up to date with regard to its arrangements and orchestrations."

READ MORE

Taking a break from the set, I went to the film's production office and listened to some of the soundtrack on CD. There is a new power to the music and a new purity to Madonna's voice, especially on the show stopping Don't Cry For Me Argentina. When I mentioned that purity to Madonna, she responded: "Oh, I've gone pure in my old age!" with a dirty laugh.

However, the soundtrack's revelation is the singing voice of Antonio Banderas, who plays Che in the film. With a short haircut that makes him look younger and more handsome than he has in years, Banderas proved a very animated talker when we met in his trailer.

"My singing is going to be a surprise for the people who come to see the film, and it's a surprise for me," he said. "When we were recording the album, we were thinking all the time that we were doing something that hadn't been performed for the cameras yet. So I was more acting than just recording the songs when we were in the studio, dramatising what we were doing before we went near the set."

Unlike Che in the stage version of Evita, the Che played by Banderas is not based on Che Guevara - there is no evidence that Guevara and Eva Peron ever met - and instead is a Brechtian Everyman figure who crops up in situations throughout the movie.

"He is the narrator of the whole story," Banderas explains. "He takes a very critical view of Eva, and he's sometimes cynical and aggressive and funny.

"At the same time he gets struck by the charm of this woman, just like so many people in Argentina at the time who didn't agree with her but respected and loved her at the same time. He gives the movie another perspective and if we didn't have a character like Che, the audience would be crying all the time. What my character does is he dries the tears of the audience and goes for their brain. I think Che is defined in his first song when he sings, Oh, what a circus, Oh, what a show.

Jonathan Pryce, who plays Juan Peron, has already demonstrated his singing prowess on stage in Miss Saigoni and Oliver!

"Because I've done two stage musicals and so much film work, I wanted to put the two experiences together as a sort of goodbye to the world of musicals. I can't imagine I will ever do another one. I've had the best of them and this is like a culmination of it all."

For Evita, Parker is drawing on some of the team with whom he made his previous musical, The Commitments, in Dublin, including casting directors Ros and John Hubbard. Angeline Ball, who made her cinema debut as one of the Commitments, and Alex Sharpe, flew from Dublin to London to provide the backing vocals to Madonna on the recording of Another Suitcase in Another Hall.

Parker cast singer Andrea Corr, who played Sharon Rabbitte, sister of Jimmy, in The Commitments, as Juan Peron's mistress in Evita - a role originally played on stage by another Irishwoman, Siobhan McCarthy. Parker says: "The irony now, with the Corrs touring all the time, was for us to fit into Andrea's schedule, which actually proved more difficult than fitting into Madonna's schedule."

And the Evita team includes six Irish crew Derek Wallace on stand by props, Alan Butler on camera focus, Maire O'Sullivan and Ailbhe Lemass on make up and Orla Carroll and Carol Dunne in the hair department.

Tomorrow is the last day of shooting in Budapest and the whole team moves to Shepperton Studios outside London for the final three weeks of filming. After the recent announcement of her pregnancy, Madonna is looking forward to a long break. And after the wrap party, Alan Parker is going to take a short break in Ireland. "I'm going to drink a great deal of Guinness and then go back to Los Angeles and cut the film."