Adelaide: Adelaide Festival Theatre - 30 April 1980 (opening night)

Perth: Perth Entertainment Complex – 11 June 1980

Melbourne: Her Majesty's Theatre – 2 July 1980

Sydney: Her Majesty's Theatre – 14 February 1981 – 26 September 1981 (closing night)

Evita made it’s Australian premier in 1980 at the Adelaide Festival Centre, with creators Hal Prince and Andrew Lloyd Weber in attendance, and starring Jennifer Murphy in the titular role of Evita with co-stars John O’May as Che, Peter Caroll (performer Tamsin Caroll’s father!) as Juan Peron, Tony Alvarez as Magaldi, Laura Mitchell as Mistress and Mariette Rups as Alternate Eva. In Sydney, Patti LuPone would play Eva for the final season.

Producer Robert Stigwood, known for his role as producer of the Bee Gees was behind this production and it was in association with David Land, The Gwen Burrows Organisation, Michael Edgley International's and the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust. The general manager was Kevin Earle and it’s executive producer was our very good friend John “Robbo” Robertson. It would tour from Adelaide to Melbourne and Sydney for a total of 19 months.

The sound designer was the legendary “The Godfather of Sound Design” Abe Jacobs, and it was opened in Adelaide by operator Adrian Rutter, with Jeannie Hurrell and Warwick Brooks for the set-up. It was pre-automation on a fully analogue Midas TR36. Radio mics were 4 x Micron 200mhz and 4 x Thomson CSF uhf.

The speakers were McCune Sound - John Meyer worked for them - 3 way speakers with Electrovoice drivers and a rack of Amcron (Crown) amplifiers: DC300 for lows DC150 mids and D60 for top end .

Peter Casey would conduct the show for the duration of the run and the Melbourne operator was our founder and managing director, John Scandrett. It would be his last major musical to mix as operator before moving on to focus on sound design.

The show premiered on the back of an enormously popular concept album - Evita recorded with Julie Covington, would outsell Jesus Christ Superstar.

I think an interesting thing to note in the below credits aside from some very familiar names like prolific technical director Mort Clark and esteemed set designer, Shaun Gurton; that sound crew are not credited or featured at all! What a snub!

The opening night party was famously massive, having been thrown by Robert Stigwood at the Old Lion in Adelaide.