Last year, the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical Evita was brought to new audiences thanks to a West End revival helmed by Rachel Zegler which will soon be moving to Broadway. For the uninitiated, the play explores the life of Eva Perón, Argentina’s former first lady, who was widely beloved for her philanthropy, before her death at just 33. But while Evita’s story has been consecrated by a blockbuster musical, there’s another Mrs Perón who had an even bigger political influence on Argentina’s history: Isabel.
Now, her forgotten story will be brought to light in EVITA TOO the latest work from Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole who, as SH!T Theatre, blend performance, politics, and music. “The central narrative is about Isabel Perón, who was the world’s first female president but who nobody’s ever heard of,” says Biscuit. “But the work also looks at populism, as well as the ways women are treated, remembered and talked about, all themes which are very in the air right now.”
While the topics explored within the show are timely, the duo had to do some digging to delve into its historical context: taking them from London to Buenos Aires. “There’s so little information about this woman. There isn’t even one single book in the English language about Isabel Perón,” Biscuit explains. “We did this fellowship with The British Library, so we were able to access very rare books about her in Spanish, but it reached a point where we couldn’t find anything else. We were like, ‘Surely, in Argentina, there will be more information about an Argentinian president.’ But when we went to Argentina, people still hadn’t heard of her.”
Following the death of Isabel’s husband in 1974, she became Argentina’s leader, but was later ousted in 1976. The conditions of that loss of power have since determined how she is now viewed by those who do recognise her name. Among those who were alive to witness her rule, she has become synonymous with the state-sponsored violence of the military junta and Dirty War that followed. “When the military overthrew her, they did a very clever propaganda campaign, saying that her weaknesses as a leader were why they took power,” Biscuit says. “Even though she was imprisoned for a number of years by the regime, in the Argentinian consciousness she is almost a figurehead for this deeply traumatic period – despite her actually being a victim.”
While Isabel’s memory has been buried, Eva’s life has been superseded by the spectacle. Splashed across the media, she became a cipher, with her image and even physical body used for others’ political, financial and even sexual ends in the decades following her death. “There are loads of accounts of various men having sex with the corpse,” Mothersole says, voice dripping in disgust during one particularly grotesque turn in the conversation. “A Peronist general who was guarding the body was having sex with it and he ended up shooting his wife because she was jealous of him fucking this corpse. It’s bonkers.”
For Biscuit and Mothersole, the disparity in how Eva and Isabel are remembered (if at all) emphasises the control which men have within a patriarchal society, defining which stories and narratives make it into the official history. This can be through political propaganda, like in Isabel’s case, but even through pop culture. When it comes to Evita’s, her lasting legacy has now been shaped by a male fantasy, rather than truth. “When we went to see Evita’s grave in Buenos Aires, it had the words ‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina’ engraved on it. But she never said those words, they were made up by Tim Rice.”
EVITA TOO, ZOO Southside, until 30 Aug (not 24), 6.25pm