Sh!t Theatre: Evita Too – Soho Theatre

Sh!t Theatre: Evita Too continues at Soho Theatre, London until 15 October 2022.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit have dedicated their professional lives to making provocative, political and delightfully DIY performance art under the name Sh!t Theatre, all at no small expense to Arts Council England. Now they have lost their funding and are forced to turn to that most populist of art forms: the mega-musical. To be precise, they have set their sights on Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1978 creation Evita – a show that deals with populism itself – as inspiration for a production they hope can appeal to the masses and keep food on their respective tables.

Now, theatre makers with no better ideas than to mock others do not tend to create enjoyable work. Fortunately, Sh!t Theatre is less cynical than you might be expecting, and have created an astoundingly inventive show that is hilarious nearly to the point of medical concern.

Rather than taking easy pot-shots at Evita, Mothersole and Biscuit evince its numerous failings by constructing a brand new (and better) show about Juan Perón’s next wife – and one of the first female heads of state in the world – Isabel Perón. The pair’s trademark DIY ethos is still the order of the day as they utilise audience members and homemade puppets to bulk up their low-budget show to the scale of the mega-musicals that have inspired them. The laughs go far beyond “look at this low budget production going wrong” however: for a pair whose website emphasises a love of free improvisation, they have crafted one of the most bracingly joke-dense scripts I have heard in years.

Yet, Evita Too’s biggest boon is the theatrical presence of Mothersole and Biscuit themselves. They keep their performances loose and are the most charming and likeable pair with whom you could ever hope to spend 90 minutes. Due to them, the show is much less confrontational and spiky than it might be in the hands of lesser writers. It is full of warmth, with Mothersole and Biscuit poking just as much fun at themselves as the multi-millionaire theatre bigwigs that surely deserve it more. They veer from their impeccable script often to share a laugh or deliver a laser-focused and up-to-the-minute attack on today’s ever-changing political nightmare.

The production, for all its hilarity, is ultimately a political piece. By bringing so much of themselves into the show, Mothersole and Biscuit make a powerful statement about the vast differences in opportunity between the rich and the poor and between women and the rest of the world. Where Evita (or “Evita One” in the lexicon of this production) glossed over Argentina’s complex political situation, Evita Too brings it to the forefront and cleverly takes on populism in all its forms.

It may never be as huge as Evita One, Miss Saigon, or the other enormously successful shows it references, but Evita Too is one of the most purely enjoyable times I have had in a theatre in a long time, and deserves to be seen by as many people as the Soho Theatre can humanely cram in. You will laugh at jokes that feel as though they were written just for you, and others from a perspective you may never have considered, all in the company of two great talents who feel like friends.

Please, a thousand more shows like this before another multi-million-pound budget snooze fest too afraid to take chances for fear of missing out on a solitary ticket sale. Companies like Sh!t Theatre provide the energy that keeps this artform alive and relevant. Go watch.

Ian Bowkett