He starred opposite Angela Lansbury in “Anyone Can Whistle” and played Barnaby in “Hello, Dolly!” opposite Carol Channing, then Betty Grable and then Eve Arden.
“When I look back,” Evans told Playbill in 2007, “I think I’ve had some kind of angel on my shoulder, leading me toward the best shows of Broadway’s golden years. I didn’t pick and choose them — they just came around that way.”
Evans made it to New York in 1955 and would become friendly with choreographers Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins. Evans’ first musical as a dancer on Broadway was “New Girl in Town,” which starred Gwen Verdon and was choreographed by Fosse. Evans also was cast by Fosse for “Redhead,” with Verdon, and the movie of “The Pajama Game.” Other highlights were starring on Broadway with Henry Fonda and Margaret Hamilton in a revival of “Our Town” in 1969 and being a standby for Jim Dale in “Barnum” in the early 1980s. He was a chimney sweep when Julie Andrews immortalized “Mary Poppins” on film in 1964.
His later Broadway credits include the mid-1990s revival of “Sunset Boulevard,” “The Scarlet Pimpernel” and as an understudy in “Oklahoma!” in 2002. He also snagged a cameo in the film “Enchanted” with Amy Adams in 2007. He was on Broadway in the original “West Side Story” and later in the 1961 film version.