'Mega musical' to tell little-known tale of female president who hung Eva Peron's corpse in her dining room

Isabel Peron, the third wife of President Juan Perón, who had the embalmed body of Peron's more famous wife, Evita, hanging in her dining room, served as the president of Argentina from 1974 to 1976.

Ms Peron, who is now 95, became president in 1974 following the death of her husband.

Fringe First winners Sh!t Theatre, comprised of Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole, are to put on Evita Too at Zoo Southside, billing it “the sequel to Evita that no one knew needed to happen”.

Writers and performers Ms Biscuit and Ms Mothersole said: "Isabel Peron went from nightclub dancer to the world’s first female president. She ran Argentina, kept Evita’s corpse hanging in her dining room, survived coups and literal wizards…then somehow got completely erased from history. The biggest surprise of all - she is still alive. This story could only be a mega musical.

“We became obsessed with Ms Peron, travelled to Argentina to investigate, tried to chase her down in Madrid, failed miserably, and turned the whole disaster into the sequel to Evita that no one knew needed to happen and that Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice did not sign off on. It’s about power, populism, legacy, and the strange ways history remembers women – or forgets them entirely.”

They added an addendum to their comment, asterisked against the fact that Ms Peron is still alive: “*at time of writing. Please hang in there Isabel, our finale depends on it.”

Ms Peron met her husband during his exile in Panama after he was overthrown from the Argentinian leadership in 1955. She quickly became a go-between for Peron, travelling to Argentina for meetings when he was not allowed.

Interested in matters of the occult, in 1965, she met José López Rega, who was a former policeman with an interest in occultism and fortune-telling, who became her husband’s personal secretary.

Her husband later returned to power in Argentina, when she was appointed vice president. After he suffered a period of ill health, she was summoned home from a European trade mission and secretly sworn in as acting president the next day . She officially became president when Peron died on 1 July 1974.

Director Ursula Martinez said she had been asked to help out with Sh!t Theatre’s work after Ms Mothersole and Ms Biscuit’s co-collaborator Adam Brace, died suddenly in 2023.

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She said: “Evita TOO is my first directing project with Becca and Louise. As with all of their shows, there are several strands running alongside each other. One is the personal, who they are, their relationship with each other and their art.

“The other strand is a deep, documented delve into something that has captured their imagination. This time, the forgotten story of the first ever female president of a country in the history of the world, Isabel Perón.”