We chatted to Rebecca and Louise about bringing Evita Too to the Southbank Centre this December.
What can you tell us about Evita Too? Evita Too is a 2-person mega-musical about legacy, who gets remembered and how. It is inspired by the great populists of musical theatre – Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice – and their musical, Evita One.
Evita Too tells the story of the first ever female president of a country in the history of
the world – Isabel Peron – and the story of us, Sh!t Theatre, being mindblown that we
hadn’t heard of her. We present original songs, unbelievable historical facts and, if
you’re lucky, gratuitous nudity.
It’s an occasionally serious but mostly a very silly night out.
What was it that made you want to bring Isabel’s story to the stage? Isabel Peron started off as a nightclub dancer and then led Argentina for nearly two disastrous years before being overthrown and imprisoned by a military junta. Her life story covers poverty, exploitation, beautiful corpses, war, the occult. It’s an unbelievable story and almost completely forgotten. We went on a research trip to Buenos Aires – where she was president not that long ago – and in a Peron-themed bar called Peron Peron, the waiter had never even heard of her.
How does it feel to be bringing the show to London? We’ve never performed at the Southbank before and we are honoured and excited and terrified but don’t tell anyone the last bit please.
What was the most interesting thing that you learnt about Isobel Peron
when putting the show together? Isabel’s life is so wild and fascinating we actually had to cut parts of it out or the show would’ve been too long. Where to start? Her father died leaving her penniless, so she went off dancing around Latin America to raise money for her family, she met an exiled ex-president in a nightclub where she was gogo dancing, she lived with the corpse of his famous dead wife, she was into the occult and hired a wizard as her personal secretary who was a member of a right-wing cult who chainsawed off the hands of her husband…
What are you most looking forward to about performing the show for
audiences? We’re very happy with the songs we’ve written and we can’t wait to share them, there is one particular banger which was inspired by the brief but glorious disco sci fi craze of the mid-1970s, during which the audience may get hit in the face by a
remote control helicopter.
By Emma Clarendon
Evita Too will run at the Southbank Centre from the 9th to the 31st December.