If President Donald Trump’s photo op at the White House after his coronavirus hospitalization had been a tryout for a Broadway musical, there’d be no callback.
Trump was discharged from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Monday after three days of treatment for COVID-19. Upon returning to the White House, the president removed his face mask and appeared on the Truman Balcony overlooking the South Lawn to pose for photographs.
The moment looked an awful lot like “Evita,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical based on the life of former Argentine first lady Eva Perón. In the show’s most famous scene, Evita appears on a balcony after her husband, President Juan Perón, is elected and sings “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” to a crowd of supporters.
Patti LuPone, who originated the role of Eva Perón on Broadway in 1979, wasn’t impressed with Trump’s version. The legendary actor and singer shared her less-than-enthusiastic review of the president’s performance on Twitter, dryly noting: “This revival is closing November 3rd.”
Others, including CNN’s Jim Acosta and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, picked up on the resemblance, too.
It isn’t the first time LuPone, a two-time Tony winner who’d been slated to return to Broadway in a revival of “Company” this spring, has criticized the president.
Appearing at the Tony Awards in 2017, she told Variety that Trump shouldn’t come see “War Paint,” the Broadway show in which she was starring at the time.
“I hope he doesn’t, because I won’t perform if he does,” she said, adding: “Because I hate the motherfucker.”
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