Time was, when you'd seen one "Evita" you'd seen them all.

Until recently, watching live stage productions of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's pop opera - revived, starting Thursday at Lydia Mendelssohn courtesy of Ann Arbor Civic Theatre - was like watching a movie, so etched in stone was Harold Prince's epic 1980 Broadway version.

In productions for years afterward, every set and every scene, even the stage movements of the performers, looked exactly like those of the original. The 1996 Madonna movie version did little to budge the stiltedness that ironically undercut the show's appealing story about the rise and fall of Argentina's sinner-turned-saint first lady, Eva Peron.

The first breakaway "Evita" I saw was last spring's production at Eastern Michigan University, in which director Pirooz Aghassa took an approach linked to 19th-century opera in the mode of Verdi and Rossini. It wasn't Harold Prince, but it worked beautifully.

Ann Arbor Civic director Kyle A. Matthews may not have Verdi or Rossini in mind in sculpting her own version of "Evita," yet she's as determined as Aghassa was to veer from the Broadway formula.

"I've thought about this show a lot," Matthews says. "I did research on Eva Peron's background and on the politics of Argentina of her time (the late 1940s to early '50s).

"I wanted to understand what the show was portraying on stage. What was going on? Who really is Eva Peron? Who is Juan Peron? Who is Che?"

The last character is usually (though not in the movie) portrayed as a young, pre-Castro-Cuba Che Guevara, who serves largely as chorus and observer. Sometimes he participates in the action, but mostly he offers cynical asides on Juan's rise to the presidency of Argentina - on Eva's skirts, one might say.

For those not up on the show or Argentine history, Eva Duarte was a poor but hugely ambitious girl of the streets who essentially slept her way to the top - with superstar tango singer Augustin Magaldi (Bill Quigley), then with Gen. Juan Peron (Glenn Bugala). The latter's slapdash program of populist fascism helped sweep him into power in the late '40s, but it was largely wife Eva - now a mediocre film actress but the darling of the Argentine masses, who propelled her husband to top-dog status.

"Many Argentinians think of Eva as a saint, even today," Matthews notes. "They think of her as an angel who fed the hungry, opened hospitals, brought good will wherever she went. They're convinced all the evidence of her looting the national treasury was fabricated, a pack of lies.

"Of course, there's also the view that Eva (who died of cancer in 1952) was a monster, a woman who cared for nothing but herself (including a thwarted desire to rule Argentina alongside her husband). I don't think either version is true, although she was very far from a saint.

"But somewhere in there was the true Eva Peron. And that's what we're trying to seek out."

To that end, Matthews has nothing but praise for leading lady Kathy Waugh (formerly known as Kathy Marrero): "She really knows what she's doing. She has the talent, she does her research, she comes to rehearsal prepared every night. She's got a great work ethic."

Other principals in Civic's 38-member cast include Beth Vaccaro as Peron's teen-age mistress, abruptly and curtly evicted by new love Eva.

Musically, the production features a 17-member orchestral ensemble and 10-member children's choir, under the baton of musical director Pamela Vachon. "We have two keyboard (that is, synthesizer) players," Matthews says. "But I really wanted a live-strings effect on 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina,' when Eva steps out on that balcony. Our five violinists will be playing their hardest. It's a truly stirring vision."