Sh!t Theatre have never been a company to take the obvious route, and with Evita Too, their latest anarchic offering at the Purcell Room, they once again prove that history is far more interesting when it’s poked, prodded, and occasionally roller‑skated over.

Evita Too is created, researched and performed by self‑confessed drinking pals, Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole. The production turns its attention to Isabel Perón, Juan Peron’s third wife and the woman who unexpectedly became the world’s first female president after his death. While her predecessor Eva Duarte has been immortalised in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s global megahit Evita, Isabel has been largely erased from both popular culture and political biography shelves. Biscuit and Mothersole seize that absence with glee.

Before the show even begins, a disembodied voice offers the audience a choice: would they prefer a detailed mind‑map of Isabel Perón’s political history, or nude roller‑skating to The Phantom of the Opera? The result is predictable, and the tone is set, irreverent, chaotic, and knowingly silly, but always with a sharp political undercurrent.

The production charts Isabel’s journey from a young, impoverished showgirl to the carefully managed public figure under the guidance of a man 35 years her senior. The performers highlight the contradictions of a woman simultaneously “Mister Remembered and Mister Forgotten,” given a voice only to speak the words others placed in her mouth. Yet the show never becomes a lecture; instead, it revels in humour, music, and a kind of joyful defiance.

There is also a gentle, cheeky envy directed at Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice and Elaine Paige, whose glamorous rendering of Eva Perón has long overshadowed Isabel’s far stranger, more complicated story. Evita Too doesn’t attempt to compete with the musical theatre juggernaut, it dismantles it, laughs at it, and then builds something far more intimate and mischievous in its place.

Funny and anarchic, Evita Too is a reminder that history is full of women who slipped through the cracks, and that sometimes the best way to honour them is not with solemnity, but with a riotous, lovingly irreverent celebration.

Brilliantly bonkers and very, very funny.

Five Stars.

Reviewed by Nina Gardner

Evita Too is showing at The Southbank Purcell Rooms

9 December – 31 December 2025

Tickets and further information can be found at the link below

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/sht-theatre-evita-too/

Creatives

Written and performed;          Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole

 Director: Ursula Martinez

 Design: Zoē Hurwitz;

Lighting Design: Dan Carter-Brennan

Original Music: Sh!t Theatre

Composition & Music Production: John Biddle

Music Assistant & Track Producer: Jonathan Mitra

Stage Manager: Rose Hockaday