Evita Too by Sh!t Theatre – Soho Theatre, London

In development since earlier this year, when they presented a highly entertaining scratch version performed in part by interns, Evita Too is a Sh!t Theatre show – and that brings expectations, which are rather brilliantly fulfilled. In the years since their first success, Letters from Windsor House, Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole have forged a style that is entirely their own. They combine the personal, the political and the extremely silly in a way that is both very enjoyable and powerfully satirical. Their last show, Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum With Expats combined a boozy Med holiday with an exposé of the corruption in Maltese politics that became much better known shortly afterwards, when the assassins of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galicia were brought to justice. Evita Too is a more layered show, hitting a range of targets closer to home, which becomes apparent in the opening scene. After taking an audience vote on the options of a mind map of the show or the pair of roller skating naked to Starlight Express, the pair gives us what we want, obviously option two. This is very funny and also a neat way to introduce a wide-ranging debate about the nature of entertainment on stage, and the pressures of performing.

On the one hand, Sh!t Theatre have no love for “Tory peer” Andrew Lloyd-Webber and “UKIP donor” Tim Rice, but they know a good tune when they hear one. In fact, they’ve written a whole series for the show which they perform with a professionalism that reveals the talent underpinning their seemingly haphazard approach. They have also been on a research trip to Buenos Aires to inquire into Isabel Perón, Argentina – and the world’s – first female president. She is the apparent focus of the show, which exposes the misguided nature of the search for heroes and heroines. Perón, now forgotten rather than reviled, was the wife of Juan Perón who moved from popular left wing hero to right wing dictator, returning to from exile in 1974 and announcing his arrival with an airport massacre (audience members are drafted in as, among other things, massacred victims). When he died unexpectedly of a heart attack, Isabel took over for a turbulent two years during which she ran a death squad (only a modest one, as Sh!t Theatre are keen to clarify) before she was overthrown in a coup. She is still alive, in exile in Madrid, but Rebecca and Louise were sadly unable to meet her, although they film themselves trying and staging an exhibition nearby in an attempt to lure her out. There is a great deal of research behind the show, including jaw dropping details of the true Eva Perón story involving, amongst other things, a fascist wizard advisor, Eva’s lobotomy, and Juan and Isabel keeping Eva’s mummified corpse in their dining room. These are used to gleefully expose the artistic and political sham that is the Evita! musical.

The show is not just about Rice and Lloyd Webber and the monetised, post-Thatcher attitude to the arts that they represent, but uses this to reflect back on the experience of putting on a show in the current political climate. Evita Too is produced on a shoestring (not that any Sh!t Theatre show looks expensive) because they didn’t get the Arts Council funding they applied for. Their work is also becoming more personally precarious, and they intersperse an account of the fertility tests they take to find out whether either could still have children with their partners, while knowing that doing so could finish the other’s career. The scenes in which they drop the lights and talk to one another in silhouette about their fears are moving. Evita Too pretends to be chaotic, but it’s something of a triumph – a multi-layered performance that brings us laughter, tears and, for one lucky gentleman, the opportunity to make the performers mojitos live on stage while crushing ice in time as Louise and Rebecca perform a song and dance number, Evita!-style.