Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Evita Too
Sh!t Theatre
Genre: Dark Comedy, Musical Theatre, New Writing
Venue: ZOO Southside
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The award winning Sh!t Theatre turn their documentary-cabaret style to Isabel Perón, who in 1974 became the first woman in the world to serve as president of a country and has been almost entirely forgotten since. Evita Too is both a portrait of her and an account of the time the company spent researching her story. Expect original songs, constant costume changes (and lack of costumes), real political bite and, true to form, a healthy disregard for convention.
Review
Over a decade ago Lyn Gardner called Sh!t Theatre ‘smart and necessary’ and they are probably smarter and definitely more necessary now. They are feeling their age though, a preoccupation they share in this show – will we still love them tomorrow or like Evita will they only be relevant when young and beautiful? It’s a clever way of asking whose value gets tied to their youth, and whose doesn’t (blockbuster musical theatre male peers of the realm maybe?) Sh!t Theatre, the award-winning duo of Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit, do not do conventional storytelling, and Evita Too is not the kind of theatre you can sum up simply This is documentary, cabaret, confession and a fair amount of chaos, performed in the duo’s trademark white face paint, clowns telling us a serious (albeit jaw-droppingly extraordinary) story nobody who writes history books (umm, men?) has bothered to tell before.
The story they’re sharing is Isabel Perón’s, the wife who came after Evita and, in 1974, the first woman in the world to serve as president of a country but practically nobody has heard of her, uncried for even in Argentina. The title is a triple pun: a nod to the Lloyd Webber and Rice musical that made Evita a global household name, a note that Isabel came after her as Juan Perón’s wife, and a statement of intent, if mainstream entertainment has not celebrated her (unlike Evita One), this show won’t. It’s a complex story to nail; Isabel’s presidency should be a celebrated landmark, and instead comes tangled up with a right-wing populist husband, a Rasputin-like wizard, and an end to her office by a murderous military coup.
Evita Too is two shows in one, the story of Isabel and the story of how this piece was made, field trips to Argentina and Madrid included (the reveal from this final trip produced a collective audience gasp). The show has been in development since 2022 and this performance run opened at the South Bank last winter (directed by Ursula Martinez). Biscuit and Mothersole are upfront about their intention to stage a bigger and bolder show than ever before (well Andrew and Tim did it with their story of an Argentinian president’s wife) and the songs are surprisingly moving, although no surprise that they are great numbers (written by the duo, production and additional composition Ian Hill and John Biddle). There are some glorious costumes and wigs, all pink or pink adjacent,and a corpse represented by a gruesome giant puppet (made by Freddie Hayes), which has a strangely familiar face.
Fantastically entertaining though the show is, it feels that it hasn’t quite melded together; there are a couple of scene changes and at each restart a bit of the oomph has gone. And there is a lot of material and it doesn’t always cohere into the whole.
Ageing isn’t the only theme explored. When is the right time to have children as female performers? They suggest a man in the same job is rarely asked to weigh up this decision, poignantly revealing the Evita didn’t, and Isabel couldn’t, have children of their own. There is a running joke about unsolicited feedback from men, revenge is sweet when this is projected on a large screen, and whether the male gaze can flatten a complicated woman into a simple headline, glossing over the harder, darker parts of her story. There is a very clever demonstration of populism in action and if you smugly assume that you wouldn’t get caught up in cheap tactics to get your vote then see what you do when offered a choice of a Powerpoint on the themes of the show or naked roller skating.
Like Sh!t Theatre’s shows before it, Evita Too is never dull, never linear, a bit educational and bloody entertaining. This is political theatre but never worthy. How could a show that for a good chunk is delivered by semi-naked women in waterproof children’s duck capes be anything but a glorious riot of an evening in the theatre.
