If you were expecting the follow up to Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice’s smash hit musical about the life of Eva Perón sell your ticket fast (there’ll be plenty of takers). Oh no, no, no. This is audacious feminist political theatre about the third wife of dictator/not dictator Juan Perón‘s, Isabel Martínez de Perón.

It is a musical, yes, but it won’t be showing on an ATG stage any time soon. Sh!t Theatre don’t do that sort of thing. They leave that to people like Elaine Paige – although Paige is an (unwilling) protagonist in this blistering production.

Before taking the stage Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole set a democratic task for the audience (because we live in a democracy, unlike, maybe, the Argentinians that were under Perón’s rule). Should they open the show with a PowerPoint presentation or should they rollerskate naked around the stage? If you know Sh!t Theatre you will immediately guess the answer.

Sh!t Theatre’s style is home made props, roughshod scenery, and surreal scene shifts. And their history in Edinburgh has been on small Summerhall stages, so to take the main stage in the glorious Zoo Southside is a step up. They welcome the opportunity with open arms.

This is full on Musical Theatre, but it’s supported with huge amounts of inventive, sometimes jaw-droppingly so, newsreel footage, animation, and subtitling of lyrics. It’s a theatrical tour-de-force, if a little rough around the edges.

Perón’s story is faithfully told (as Wikipedia later confirmed) and forensically researched. My fact check was necessary because Isabel Perón is the least well-known first female president in the world and it was entirely possible that this crazy story was a) fake news or b) fake news. It’s not.

So strap in for a full blown history lesson, with hilarious songs, as we are transported from the early days of Isabelita as a showgirl, who Juan Perón met in a nightclub in Panama (allegedly called Happyland, but that really might be fake news) where he was exiled.  Despite being 35 years his junior she soon became his wife and later the Vice President of Argentina, before dropping the vice (well, that’s arguable) and taking the lead after Juan’s death.

So far so respectable, but Sh!t theatre don’t do respectable.  The whole story is told in a whirlwind of creativity. An audience member provides percussion for one song by crushing ice with a hammer, the pair appear as ducks, the aforementioned rollerskating, we meet a wizard, a puppet of Elaine Paige, Evita’s corpse disguised as Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Perón’s heart attack (an infarta in Spanish) is turned into a song that’s a singalonga fart gag.

The point is that most of the men are idiots. Perón is told at one point in the show ‘You’re too weak and too female. Argentina needs a man.’  When she is overthrown a military spokesman approaches her and instructs her, patronisingly, ‘Madam, this is a coup’.

Isabel Perón despite being alive and kicking in Madrid is erased from history in Argentina, even in a Perón-themed bar there is no mention of her. It’s as if she never was. Too inconsequential as a woman to be acknowledged. ‘What does a girl have to do to be remembered?’ And that’s how many women feel about their roles.

Sh!t Theatre make sure that every single person who attends this production will never forget Isabelita.

Don’t cry for her Argentina.

EVITA TOO is at Main House at ZOO Southside until Sun 30 Aug 2026