Sh!t Theatre: EVITA TOO – Purcell Room, Southbank Centre

Sh!t Theatre: EVITA TOO continues at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London until 31 December 2025.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

It starts with a plea to democracy, by handing the decision of how to open the show to the audience: would they like to see a slideshow of all the mind maps that Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole (aka Sh!t Theatre) put together as they formulated this show about Juan Perón’s other political wife – or should they roller skate on stage naked to a video of Andrew Lloyd Webber DJing club mixes of The Phantom of the Opera? The audience, unsurprisingly, votes for the roller skating.

The risqué nature of their arrival onstage (after which they quickly don bright pink leotards) isn’t just to grab our attention but to point out that, as women, they have to work harder to be remembered at all. And that’s especially true in the case of Isabel Perón. Her husband Juan’s third wife, she lived in Madrid with him and, in the first of many surprising real-life elements presented to us, with Eva’s embalmed corpse.

When Perón returned to Argentina and was elected to power, Isabel became his vice president. Upon his sudden death, she assumed her place at the top, becoming (as the show drives home) the first female leader of a country anywhere in the world.

Her reign did not last. A military coup displaced her, replacing the presidency with a junta that lasted until the end of the Falklands War. But now, Isabel Perón is not only a footnote in history, she has been all but forgotten. As part of Evita Too, we see video footage of Biscuit and Mothersole visiting a Perón-themed bar in Buenos Aires where the waitress denies that she ever existed.

Isabel’s story is wild – so wild that to make a conventional musical out of it would result in incomprehension at some of the weird but true tales, including wizard cult leaders, mystical ceremonies to imbue Isabel with Eva’s spirit, and the removal of Juan Perón’s hands from his corpse.

And yet Sh!t Theatre’s raucous, silly, irreverent dissection of what it takes to be a famous woman feels like a far more honest depiction of Argentinian politics than Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita – which is referenced, satirised and torn down with glee here. While Evita Too originally debuted in 2022, this production has been updated with references to this year’s London Palladium revival, to go alongside the multitude of nods to the original stage Evita, Elaine Paige.

The ways in which ‘Isabelita’ was belittled and controlled by the men around her is as biting as it is hilarious. Biscuit and Mothersole refer to her disappearance from history not as misremembering, but as “mister-rembering” – a reminder that when history is viewed through a patriarchal, misogynistic lens, it’s inevitable that women’s stories are diminished and belittled.

For such a serious message to emerge from a show which is generally a piece of bonkers clowning and buffoonery is heartening. The comedic songs (written by the Sh!t Theatre duo) aren’t the level of a great West End musical, but they don’t have to be. They tell a story far more effectively, and honestly, than the like of Evita ever did.

Isabel Péron is now in her nineties, back living in Madrid. The show’s Act II (“It’s the first time we’ve had a show with an interval”, the pair shout with glee) includes footage of Biscuit and Mothersole attempting to contact her. This attempt to turn their show into a cod documentary doesn’t quite work, but still elicits moments of quirky silliness.

But not quite working is an aesthetic choice for Sh!t Theatre. If their shows were slick and overproduced, they wouldn’t be anywhere near as funny, nor as revelatory. After the singing and dancing – and, yes, naked roller skating – is done, we are left with a sense of knowing who Isabel Péron really was, and is. And that’s far more fulfilling than any musical that fictionalises her predecessor out of all recognition.

Scott Matthewman