When a press release lands describing a show as a “climate change romantic comedy musical” and the venue is mercifully air-conditioned during the week London decided to melt into a puddle, you go. You go immediately. Last night I hauled my sticky, overheated self to The Other Palace in Victoria, slid into a cool velvet seat and watched two people on a stage do more for the environmental conversation than three decades of political hand-wringing has managed. I am not exaggerating. Hot Mess: A New Musical is quite simply one of the best written musicals I have ever seen on a London stage.
Let us address the elephant in the room, or rather the melting ice cap. A show about Earth and Humanity falling in and out of love, played as a full blown romantic relationship, sounds like it should be unbearably earnest, possibly featuring interpretive dance with recycling bins. It is not. It is a masterclass in wit, precision and the kind of clever, relentless joke writing that leaves you breathless. The book, by Ellie Coote, is a diamond. The gags are endless, the one-liners land like little grenades and the metaphor is so perfectly sustained that you forget you are being educated at all until you find yourself sobbing into your programme.
The entire show rests on two actors, Danielle Steers as Earth and Morgan Gregory as Humanity, or Hugh as he likes to be called, and they are electric. Steers I remember vividly from her run in SIX, and she was superb then, but she has grown into an absolute powerhouse. Her voice could crack open a glacier, and her performance as a planet who has been single for 66 million years since the whole dinosaur debacle and is tentatively ready to love again is funny, sexy and devastatingly moving. When Earth finally roars through the climactic number “My House” and kicks Humanity out for good, the theatre practically shook. Gregory matches her every step, making Humanity charming and infuriating in equal measure, the boyfriend who promises to be better “tomorrow” while secretly eyeing up the moon.
The script is so sharp it stings. Lines like “You’re my world” are delivered with a wink, but then there are exchanges that land with the force of a UN climate report, only much, much funnier. The topic is so cleverly developed that you barely notice you are getting a crash course in planetary collapse. These two are us. Earth gives and gives, Humanity takes and takes, and the relationship becomes a textbook case of abuse, neglect, infidelity and workaholism dressed up in sky high pop bangers. I scribbled down at least a dozen lines I wanted to cross stitch onto a pillow, and I am not a cross stitch person.
Musically, it is the love child of SIX and a synth pop fever dream, with rap interludes, soaring ballads and one number about apple flavours that had the audience howling. The early hopefulness of “Better With Time” curdles beautifully into the frantic, guilty anthem “Tomorrow”, and when Earth finally throws Humanity out, you will cheer and then immediately feel deeply uncomfortable about your own takeaway coffee cup habit. This musical will contribute more to the environmental conversation than decades of political activism has done, because it makes the problem intimate, personal and wincingly relatable. It turns “saving the planet” into “saving a toxic relationship”, and suddenly everyone is paying attention.
At just the right length, with no interval to cool the momentum, the show barrels through millennia at breakneck speed, leaving you gasping. Jack Godfrey’s songs are earworms of the highest order; I am still humming one about windmills. The two hander format is a stroke of genius, keeping everything tight and focused on the chemistry between our two leads, and director Ellie Coote lets the steaminess build until the whole thing combusts.
I took one of my London Mums’ contributors – mum number four who joined our mummies’ network in 2006, and now my friend Joanna. She is a lover of musicals but walked in mildly sceptical and walked out announcing she was getting a compost bin. If that is not a five star review, I do not know what is.
Hot Mess: A New Musical is at The Other Palace until 6 September 2026. It is the perfect sweaty evening salvation, fully air-conditioned, hysterically funny and more important than it has any right to be.
Book tickets at theotherpalace.co.uk and then go home and hug your reusable water bottle. You will want to.
Monica Costa founded London Mums in September 2006 after her son Diego’s birth together with a group of mothers who felt the need of meeting up regularly to share the challenges and joys of motherhood in metropolitan and multicultural London. London Mums is the FREE and independent peer support group for mums and mumpreneurs based in London https://www.londonmumsmagazine.com and you can connect on Twitter @londonmums
