The Guardian
"Brilliant one-liners and dazzling music."
Fresh from a five-star, award-winning run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Hot Mess: A New Musical arrives in London for a strictly limited season at The Other Palace. From Jack Godfrey and Ellie Coote, the team behind 42 Balloons, it is an original pop musical with an audacious premise: a doomed love story between Earth and Humanity.
The setup is part romance, part cosmic comedy. After billions of years alone, Earth finally meets the one, Humanity, and for a while it is bliss. But as the relationship curdles from passion into something more destructive, their break-up starts to look a lot like the mess we are all living through. It is funny, poignant and unexpectedly moving, wrapped in an infectious pop score.
Why it’s worth the watch
Hot Mess turns a huge subject into an intimate, catchy 85 minutes. Here is why it is worth catching:
- The concept. Casting the climate crisis as a break-up between two lovers is a genuinely fresh idea, and it lands emotionally rather than preachily.
- The score. Jack Godfrey’s pop songs are sharp and hummable, in the mould of the writing team’s earlier hit 42 Balloons.
- The pedigree. It arrives garlanded with five-star reviews and awards from Edinburgh, where it was one of the most talked-about shows of the Fringe.
- The intimacy. The Other Palace’s studio setting puts you right up close, and at 85 minutes with no interval it is an easy, low-commitment night out.
