Sh!t Theatre: Evita Too review

It opens with the voices of Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole, the two halves of Sh!t Theatre, giving their audience two options: either they can kick things off with a presentation about the subject of the play, the largely forgotten first female president of Argentina – and the world – Isabel Perón; or the pair of them can roller-skate on to the stage naked, to footage of Andrew Lloyd Webber DJing to The Phantom of the Opera. The latter proves irresistible, of course, and they keep their word – perhaps to the surprise of anyone attending their first Sh!t Theatre show. As is uniformly the way with the duo’s work, the moment isn’t a risqué skit to grab our attention, it’s one strand of an invisible web that gets neatly woven together by the end. “What does a woman have to do to be remembered?” they ask, before dressing themselves in bright pink leotards. 

Previously staged in 2022, this play-with-songs has been updated with references to the West End’s smash-hit production of Evita starring Rachel Zegler, and changes in the pair’s own lives. Beyond explorations of populism and the gender divide, grief is a recurring theme – in a literal sense, they’ve lost their director Adam Brace, who was also Biscuit’s partner, since its last staging, but there’s metaphorical grieving, too, for other lives they might have lived, perhaps with children. Under new direction by Ursula Martinez, it’s tightly plotted, rebellious, feminist theatre – an alternative history lesson that’s always entertaining. 
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