Who We Are
Cassio Productions produce musical theatre in the Watford Area. We are a membership-based group staging quality musical theatre shows at least once a year. Purely for fun, our performers and technicians rehearse and perform together in a vibrant and creative atmosphere. The group is primarily for adults (age 16+) who rehearse in the evenings, several times a week and occasionally at weekends. We welcome those who enjoy theatre purely as a hobby but we also enjoy working with those who already have or aspire to work in the professional theatre.

The first Cassio show was in 1949 when friends, drawn from the choir of St Michael's Church in Watford who before the Second World War gave concerts, decided to branch out and produce pantomimes and shows. This group used the name Cassio Operatic Society, which still exists today as our registered charity name.

From our humble beginnings Cassio has gone from strength to strength and we now use the name Cassio Productions to promote our large-scale productions around the area.

For nearly sixty years Cassio have performed shows at the Watford Palace Theatre, a wonderfully restored Edwardian Theatre in the heart of the town. Other venues in Watford have included the Pump House Theatre and the James Theatre with performances further afield at Watersmeet in Rickmansworth and the Henderson Hub in Abbots Langley.

Eva Perón, in full Eva Duarte de Perón, née María Eva Duarte, by name Evita, (born May 7, 1919, Los Toldos, Argentina—died July 26, 1952, Buenos Aires), second wife of Argentine Pres. Juan Perón, who, during her husband’s first term as president (1946–52), became a powerful though unofficial political leader, revered by the lower economic classes.

Duarte was born in the small town of Los Toldos on the Argentine Pampas. Her parents, Juan Duarte and Juana Ibarguren, were not married, and her father had a wife and another family. Eva’s family struggled financially, and the situation worsened when Juan died when she was six years old. A few years later they moved to Junín, Argentina. When Eva was 15, she traveled to Buenos Aires to pursue an acting career and eventually began performing steadily in radio parts.

Eva attracted the attention of a rising star of the new government, Col. Juan Perón, and the two married in 1945. Later that year he was ousted by a coup of rival army and navy officers and briefly taken into custody. After his release, Juan entered the presidential race. Eva was active in the campaign, and she won the adulation of the masses, whom she addressed as los descamisados (Spanish: “the shirtless ones”). He was elected and took office in June 1946.

Although she never held any government post, Eva acted as de facto minister of health and labour, awarding generous wage increases to the unions, who responded with political support for Perón. After cutting off government subsidies to the traditional Sociedad de Beneficencia (Spanish: “Aid Society”), thereby making more enemies among the traditional elite, she replaced it with her own Eva Perón Foundation, which was supported by “voluntary” union and business contributions plus a substantial cut of the national lottery and other funds. These resources were used to establish thousands of hospitals, schools, orphanages, homes for the aged, and other charitable institutions. Eva was largely responsible for the passage of the women’s suffrage law and formed the Peronista Feminist Party in 1949. She also introduced compulsory religious education into all Argentine schools. In 1951, although dying of cancer, she obtained the nomination for vice president, but the army forced her to withdraw her candidacy.

After her death in 1952, Eva remained a formidable influence in Argentine politics. Her working-class followers tried unsuccessfully to have her canonized, and her enemies, in an effort to exorcise her as a national symbol of Peronism, stole her embalmed body in 1955, after Juan Perón was overthrown, and secreted it in Italy for 16 years. In 1971 the military government, bowing to Peronist demands, turned over her remains to her exiled widower in Madrid. After Juan Perón died in office in 1974, his third wife, Isabel Perón, hoping to gain favour among the populace, repatriated the remains and installed them next to the deceased leader in a crypt in the presidential palace. Two years later a new military junta hostile to Peronism removed the bodies. Eva’s remains were finally interred in the Duarte family crypt in Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Eva inspired numerous books and other works, both in Argentina and abroad. Notably, her life was the basis for the musical Evita (1978), by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice; it was later adapted into a film (1996) starring Madonna.

By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Last Updated: Oct 4, 2022

Our Grateful thanks go to

• Watford Palace Theatre and staff
• Leavesden Green JMI School
• Rennie & Co for sponsoring this production
• The Friends of Cassio Productions
• Martin Smith and Origin8 Design Ltd for designs, photography and additional set design
• Tim Redman for video footage and props
• Rickmansworth Players
• Pumphouse Theatre
• Costume Workshop for providing the costumes
• Shepperton Wigs
• Our front of house team
• Lucy Faulkner for marketing and rehearsal photography

“Eva’s pretty hands reached out and they reached wide,”

When one thinks of Eva Perón, it’s impossible not to think of her hands. Whether they’re reaching out to the heavens as she stood outside the balcony of the Casa Rosada to address the crowds, or extended as a warm greeting to those who came to greet her, her fingers covered in exquisite jewellery, topped by a perfect manicure, are central to the image of the iconic Argentinean First Lady and I hope that our production of Evita highlights the power and influence of those hands.

We're used to believing the narrator in a show or novel. But in Evita, Che is a narrator with an agenda. He can lie. He is hardly impartial. We soon realise that we’re getting two diametrically opposed points of view in Evita. Can we know that Che’s accusations are true? We see no evidence that Eva stole money from her foundation (in real life, Juan Perón did most of the dirty work). And if the poor are so much worse off, as Che claims, then why do they love Eva and Juan so much? Maybe no one on stage is telling the whole truth, including Che as narrator. Originally, Tim Rice wrote him based on Che Guevara, but it was not his intention to express that in production. That was something that Hal Prince added on in the original production and that Michael Grandage did not add on in the Broadway revival. For me, Che helps to give the context of who Guevara was and what his political beliefs were, but in our version, Che represents the revolution and is the (unpopular) voice of the silenced, acting almost like a Greek chorus, cross-examining Eva’s every move as she rises to power. Seeing the story through Che’s eyes allows us to criticise Eva’s politics, the regime, and all the things the Peróns did wrong. 

Eva Perón became First Lady of Argentina at age 25, and soon after would become one of the most famous women in the world. Her every move and word became newsworthy, and while many people criticised her for what they deemed as extravagance, she made the globe turn their eyes to a nation trying to recover from a period of political unrest. 

I believe that part of the reason Eva Peron’s story fascinates audiences is because her rapid rise to fame and power comes from a deep desire for legacy. And moreover, the fact that this person got to where she got, when she got there, is something that I find very admirable and inspiring, particularly as a woman. 

For me, Evita is a cautionary tale in the sense that it warns us of what might happen if we allow our obsession for leaders to go too far. Her story is an example of how people can get swept up in adoration for leaders or movements—in some cases, without attention to what they are actually standing behind. Hal Prince said about Evita, "It’s not about politics. Media manipulation, that’s what it’s about. And the fact that we have next to no idea who really lives in the White House, for whom we’re voting, what’s going on. We’ve learned too well how to package things, and now, people."

“Hands, magic, rings, glamour.”