Hot Mess ★★★★★

Already the talk of the Edinburgh Festival and the newly announced winner of the Popcorn prize, Hot Mess is absolutely on message. Jack Godfrey and Ellie-Coote’s new two-handed power-house of a musical, charting the relationship of human life on planet Earth, is witty, clever, compelling and a very, very important watch.

Two characters – big ones, huge – Planet Earth and Humanity (Hugh Manatee?) are entering into a relationship. Earth (Danielle Steers) is not at all certain about getting together with Hugh (Tobias Turley) and she needs a lot of persuasion – he’s glib, a bit trivial and whiny and not a patch on the Mesozoic life forms which inhabited her space before the big bang. But he grows on her and eventually their relationship is symbiotic – they grow together, sharing their respective joys and fears, until slowly, but profoundly surely, he begins to abuse her. Humanity takes advantage of everything that Earth has to offer, pillaging her resources and her good nature, polluting and exhausting her – sounds familiar? He even flirts with another, visiting the Moon on an away day, thinking she’ll not mind. Promising to change, Tomorrow is Humanity’s apology to his lover Earth – but this time, when the sun comes out, it brings not hope for a brighter day, but rising temperatures, bleached reefs, burning forests and dried up rivers.

This is a really quirky idea in so many respects – a two person musical with real power songs, two characters representing the entire world and all of its people and charting, literally, the entire history of mankind – and all done in little over an hour. How could it possibly work? But oh, it really does and what’s more the relationship is examined with such brilliantly, poignant clarity that it should be played nightly across every platform until everyone, everywhere gets the message (except of course that it would use more of Earth’s resources to do so).

Danielle Steers is magnificent and embodies Earth making her warm, wise and witty, whilst Tobias Turley makes Humanity far flightier and reactive, springing around spaniel-like with every new idea – a perfectly representative pairing. There is a big message being delivered and it comes across loud and clear without ever being preachy – it doesn’t need to be – the audience rising to its feet at the end is proof-perfect that its understood.