{"id":326722,"date":"2025-08-08T02:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T02:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326722\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T02:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T02:14:10","slug":"hot-mess-musical-at-pleasance-courtyard-edinburgh-fringe-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326722\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot Mess musical at Pleasance Courtyard \u2013 Edinburgh Fringe review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TobiasTobias Turley and Danielle Steers in Hot Mess, \u00a9 Mark Senior<\/p>\n

The Fringe is brimming with shows about romance and dating, but I doubt you\u2019ll have seen one like this before. For one thing, the protagonist of Hot Mess, a new musical by Jack Godfrey and Ellie Coote, has been single for 750 million years, and her most recent relationship was with a T-Rex.<\/p>\n

She is Earth, and Hot Mess charts the story of her relationship with her new beau, Humanity, though you can call him Hu. It\u2019s a terrifically fun idea, executed with energy and pace, and it works thanks to Coote\u2019s script, which is packed full of witty one-liners (\u201cI\u2019m not picky, I\u2019m just naturally selective\u201d) and sharp dialogue. Maybe some of the metaphors could have been worked out a little more thoroughly, but it plays its games very successfully, and it\u2019s great fun tracing Earth and Hu\u2019s relationship as he overcomes her initial scepticism and they join forces to master agriculture, the Industrial Revolution and the space age. In short, the whole span of human development and its impact on the planet.<\/p>\n

\"DanielleDanielle Steers and Tobias Turley in Hot Mess, \u00a9 Mark Senior<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a testament to the writing that it doesn\u2019t get weighed down with its own sense of purpose, and it keeps a light touch throughout, even if some of the climate change politics is a bit predictable. It works so well on stage because the two cast members bring huge energy and investment to the material. As Earth, Danielle Steers<\/a> conveys all the pitfalls of dating with sassy individualistic energy. Tobias Turley<\/a>\u2019s Hu keeps up the focus and vitality as he gets to know Earth, and then starts to wonder what life would be like without her, or beyond her. She develops from independence to love and then to post-relationship sass, while he goes from geek to pioneer, before ending with a tinge of regret. They\u2019re helped by Godfrey\u2019s songs, too, which have an 80s power ballad vibe to them, and the singers deliver them with punch.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t think of many other shows that amalgamate the dating game with the tale of human evolution, and it\u2019s surely for crazy experiments like this that the Fringe exists. Hu\u2019s affair with the Moon brings their relationship to a crisis, and there\u2019s a mischievous futuristic coda that ends the show on a cleverly anarchic note of fun. As musicals go, this is high concept, but it\u2019s high energy and high success, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tobias Turley and Danielle Steers in Hot Mess, \u00a9 Mark Senior The Fringe is brimming with shows about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-326722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114990734708965594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}