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Hot Mess review – blazing musical about Earth and humanity's toxic love affair

Hot Mess review – blazing musical about Earth and humanity's toxic love affair

The Guardian3 days ago
Does a musical romance with a climate message sound a tad worthy – and one in which the couple represent 'Earth' and 'Humanity'? In fact, Earth (Danielle Steers) is a Bridget Jones style singleton who is 750m years into looking for love. She is not convinced when Humanity (Tobias Turley) comes along, all earnestness and cute lines ('You are the centre of my universe') but is slowly won over.
Somehow, Jack Godfrey and Ellie Coote's climate romcom manages not to make a hot mess out of a very bizarre idea. Quite the opposite. It is so well executed that you see the tragedy of Earth's love affair with Humanity as a toxic relationship in which the latter betrays, manipulates and gaslights, even as you are dazzled by the music, tickled by the humour and taken in by the romance.
It is a two-hander in which both performers blaze. Steers is armed with an out-of-this-world voice and a welter of well-timed one-liners ('I can literally pull anyone, it's called gravity' and 'I'm not picky, I'm naturally selective'). Turley is a formidable singer, too, and manages his character's trajectory from wet-eared eagerness to workaholism, insecurity, unfaithfulness and denial.
It serves as a metaphor for our abuse of the planet's resources while making promises to do better, and be greener – tomorrow. But it is delivered without flat-footedness or strain, never breaking out of the storyline of its central romance. You know where it is all heading but it still manages to surprise and delight.
Coote's book whops out one brilliant line after another. Godfrey's lyrics keep up while the music is super catchy, whether synth pop, rock, funk or moments of rap. The duo's Edinburgh fringe show last year, 42 Balloons, was a runaway hit. This cements their extraordinary musical chemistry. Coote, who directs as well, keeps it pacy. Having played a run at the Birmingham Hippodrome earlier this year, the production is slick without being glib.
A fringe highlight which, like the planet, deserves a longer, fuller life.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August
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Nicole Scherzinger 'has Andrew Lloyd Webber's support to star in a film adaptation of Sunset Boulevard after successful Broadway run'
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Ralph Fiennes and Harriet Walter: our mission to make us love Shakespeare again
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Times

time15 hours ago

  • Times

Ralph Fiennes and Harriet Walter: our mission to make us love Shakespeare again

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It's a very productive, remunerative part of British life. We've got ourselves in such a mess by following the pure logic of the market. The bit we've neglected is our hearts and our souls and our minds.' Fiennes agrees. 'There seems to me to be a blind spot,' he says, 'about the value of the arts and the performing art about what it does to the quality of people's lives, their inner lives, their imaginations.' Will there be another Fiennes season in Bath next year? He confines himself to replying that he's 'cautiously optimistic'. In an ideal world, where money and time were no object, he would love to put together a company of actors to take Shakespeare into schools. What we need, he says, is to invoke the spirit of Hector, the idealistic if louche teacher in Alan Bennett's The History Boys (immortalised by Richard Griffiths in the 2006 film), and introduce the young to as many facets of the arts as possible. 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So I had the baggage of the story, not the opera, which I had seen a few times. And I just thought, yeah, I might have a few bumps, but I would hate to live and think I said no.' As You Like It runs at Theatre Royal Bath, Aug 15 to Sept 6. The Ralph Fiennes season ends in Oct with Small Hotel, What's your favourite Shakespeare play? Let us know in the comments below

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