After The Applause

This hilarious modern electro-pop romantic comedy musical about humanities relationship with earth delivers clever one-liners, catchy riffs and a very important underlying message!

I am a fan of watching shows that have originated at the Edinburgh Fringe. Whilst they start as simple ideas with small casts and sets, such as Six the musical or Mischief Theatre’s The Play That Goes Wrong, they often transfer to London and become tremendous successes! For Hot Mess, this is exactly whats happened, after a sold-out fringe run it quickly transferred to the Southwark Playhouse where it received even more rave reviews and now it has earned a months run at The Other Palace. I read the synopsis and felt this would be a very funny evening at the theatre before then listening to the music which furthered my excitement but also left me worrying I may be humming the songs all week long!

Hot Mess is a two performer musical with Danielle Steers playing the flamboyant and hard to get ‘Earth’ and Morgan Gregory as the naive and cutesy ‘Humanity’. It imagines them as a real human couple who have a first date, fall out, move in with each other and eventually cheat on one another. Ellie Coote’s book is simply hillarious, infused with simple puns and one-liners that are delivered to comic perfection by the two performers. The story is actually very gripping and we feel connected to the personifications of earth and humanity, rooting for their relationship.

The reason I wouldn’t give this 5 stars is because I wish we had more dialogue within the show. The runtime is very short, at only 1 hour and 35, and sometimes it felt like all the songs were just one after another, therefore meaning that the story itself felt rushed. Whilst I love Jack Godfrey’s music, I wish it had been slightly better balanced with Coote’s script.

Onto more about the soundtrack, I absolutely love it. It sounds fresh, modern and very pop inspired. There are no serious power ballads but instead catchy pop songs with my favourites being ‘my house’ and tomorrow’, which really fits into the simplicity of the production. The band is not a full orchestra but instead a keyboard, two guitars and a synth which again creates this futuristic sound and atmosphere.

Danielle Steers is extraordinary as Earth, carrying a powerful presence and delivering some very sassy lines, in touch with the characterisation infused into both the book and soundtrack. Steers is complimented well by the dopey humanity, portrayed really well by Morgan Gregory. During my performance there was a slight sound malfunction in the middle of ‘Tomorrow’ and Gregory tried to keep singing before being dragged off by the stage manager, it delivered a very comic moment for me. It’s live theatre people these things happen!

Shanko Chaudhuri’s set design is incredibly futuristic, shaped to look like earth and follow a blue and green colour scheme whilst the interior and other design looked more like a spaceship. I thought this embodied the progression of the planet and gave a glimpse of the future to the audience with some areas of the stage looking barren of flowers and wildlife.

That leads me on to the crucial message that the musical discusses, climate change. Done in a rather comic manner we watch as humanity gradually discovers things such as oil and gas, and through Steers’ exhaustion we watch a visual representation of what this does to the Earth. Through the song ‘what did you expect’ we watch Humanity act as an abusive boyfriend, attempting to control earth and continue damaging it. Earth responds with the ferocious revenge song ‘my house’ which shows earth and humanity breaking up. This acted as a comical yet very serious warning to us as the audience, potentially showing what could happen if climate change gets worse and we have to break up with earth by leaving it. This serious message is then juxtaposed by the finale showing how earth has moved on to dating AI assistant ‘siri’ and humanity is now in love with Mars despite the acid rain and no breathable atmosphere.

MY VERDICT:
I thought this new musical was a terrific night at the theatre. The music is really really good and very modern, and the message the whole story provides is very current. It is bright and energetic and packed in to a lovely run time of 1hour and a half, although I just wish there was a little more dialogue and the ending wasn’t as rushed. Danielle Steers is a superstar in this production and she is complimented by the comical nature of Morgan Gregory.

I would certainly recommend getting yourself to the Other Palace before the end of its run on the 6th September especially if you are a fan of the musical SIX as I found it reminiscent of that (fitting as Steers was actually in the production in the West End).