A musical about the other Mrs Perón, the one Evita made invisible.
Evita Too, the new work from Sh!t Theatre, the Fringe favourite duo Biscuit and Mothersole, feels like a legal minefield. You can tell from the name alone, and from the fact that this is a musical that uses Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music.
Biscuit and Mothersole start the show in a very Sh!t Theatre and very Evita way: by asking the audience to vote between a mind map about the political power dynamics and other things that are quite impossible to remember in such a short period of time, or watching them skate naked to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music, DJing The Phantom of the Opera. Sadly, my vote for the educational mind map is rejected by the majority, and they begin the show by skating naked.
The titular character, Evita Too, refers to Isabel Perón, the woman Juan Perón married after the death of Eva Perón. As Sh!t Theatre points out, even though Isabel was the first female president in the world, partly thanks to the popularity of Webber’s musical of the same name and the populism Eva Perón enjoyed even after her death, Isabel remains little known compared to Evita, even among people in Argentina. Sh!t Theatre begins to tell her story, from Happyland, the nightclub where she worked as a go-go dancer, to her marriage to Juan, who was living in exile in Panama at the time. Seeing an opportunity in the popularity of Evita, Juan decides to return and run for president again. Things then become increasingly strange as Isabel becomes Evita Too, relying on the charisma of Juan’s former wife, who had died years earlier. After Juan wins the election, Isabel becomes vice president, and after his death, she becomes president herself, before being overthrown in a military coup. She is still alive today.
Using their usual Sh!t Theatre approach, Biscuit and Mothersole constantly include self-reflexive elements in their storytelling. This time, there is an email from Webber’s lawyer about the legal minefield, repeated references to how their production is much smaller than Evita, and the story of their trip to meet Isabel after finding her address on the internet. The lawyer’s email itself becomes part of the joke, as the lawyer even anticipates that the email might end up being used in the show. Meanwhile, with only the opening DJ sequence using Webber’s music, the tiny scale of Evita Too becomes an obvious contrast to the mega-production of Evita.
As their first musical, Evita Too can be read as a show about their concerns over legacy and how one can be remembered. It can also be read as an exploration of how women’s faces and bodies are treated and interpreted in a patriarchal society, as well as their own confusion about and desire to have children. The brutal truth is that many Argentinians they met on their trip did not know Isabel’s history. The show tries to explore a different way of looking at women politicians. With their usual white makeup, Biscuit and Mothersole perform the songs with a tenderness that makes Isabel’s story feel less like a historical footnote and more like something being reconstructed in front of us.
Yet the musical format also limits what the show can explore. By focusing on one aspect of Isabel’s life in each song, Sh!t Theatre loses some of the complexity and nuanced ambiguity that usually makes their work so compelling. The message of the show is also so clear and uplifting that the intimate, ambiguous relationship they usually create with their audience begins to disappear.
Show listing:
Venue: ZOO Southside
Dates: 7-30 August
Time: 18:25
Ticket prices: £21.5/Concession £16.5
Fringe box office: 0131 226 0000 / http://www.edfringe.com
Age suitability: 12+ (Guideline)