Hot Mess

Ross Fitzpatrick and Molly Mew in Hot Mess. Image uncredited.

**

In some respects Hot Mess lives up to its name. TeoChroí Company’s production of Ella Hickson’s troubled script guilty of sloppy errors. Issues with low vocal projection, entrances, exits, positioning and pace proving compositionally clunky. Yet most errors are the result of inexperience and stuttering confidence. Of a new theatre company testing the waters a little before their time. Needing to start somewhere and refusing to wait around. That said, something works. Something about this scrappy ensemble transcends their inexperience. Ensuring Hot Mess delivers a gooey clump of enjoyable, sexy awkwardness.

Fiachra Corkey in Hot Mess. Image uncredited.

Less a wild night so much as the morning after a one night stand, Hot Mess purports to explore the nature of love through a twenty-something lens. Instead, Hickson highlights love hijacked to justify dark desires. Real love nowhere in sight as Hickson’s tale of co-dependent twins born sharing one heart taps into obsession, infatuation and desire. Beginning with Molo, returning to islanded isolation having mysteriously disappeared a year before. There to celebrate his twenty fifth birthday. Discovering that his furious sister, Twitch, now has a boyfriend. The lad about a small town, Billy, enjoying some no strings, summer infidelity whilst on holidays. If that works perfectly well for the sultry Jax, it's an issue for the lovelorn Twitch. The demisexual eager to civilise, sanitise and justify her darker desires. Especially one desire in particular. All, of course, in the name of love.

Laura McAleenan in Hot Mess. Image uncredited.

Under Úna Ní Nualláin’s direction, Hot Mess’s unvarying pace keeps things ticking along. But if scenes fizzle, they rarely release the text’s underlying, subtextual eroticism. Passions safely talked about but never felt as dangerous. The issue not so much a lack of skill, but of self-confidence and inexperience. Though Ní Nualláin has some interesting visual ideas, they will need to challenge and support actors more going forward. Allowing them to play their line rather than the scene, to act the mask and not the character wearing it, saw much landing like it was mid-rehearsal. Take Laura McAleenan’s Jax. A one tone, Love Island, uninhibited loud mouth. Not till the final moments do we glimpse something deeper, revealing that Jax, and McAleenan, have so much more available to draw on. Similarly Ross Fitzpatrick’s big bragger, Billy. Billy might possess imposing presence and commanding good looks, but he sparkles more than shines for also being guilty of playing their line and not the scene. A trait Fiachra Corkey’s Molo exemplifies. Skulking about like a camp, voyeuristic stalker, if the photogenic Corkey has the requisite presence to command the stage as a lead, currently he lacks the requisite experience to be truly persuasive. But you sense it bubbling under the surface. And you only learn by doing.

Molly Mew and Fiachra Corkey in Hot Mess. Image uncredited.

The fuel that sets everything alight proves to be the irrepressible Molly Mew whose twitchy Twitch lives, breathes, feels and dreams. Mew a crackerjack of a discovery. Playing the scene, Mew ignites the line, and therefore the scene. Reacting, she is always acting. Never waiting her turn to deliver her line but responding to every arising moment. Her puppet like movements the best thing about Anderson de Souza’s unconvincing movement sequences, which often suggest weak mime. Mew’s energy, presence, expressiveness, and understated delivery breathing life into what risks being a puppet rather than a person show. One final, covert ensemble member, Ruairí Nicholl, straddles stage and tech. Their composition and sound design, performed live, an almost constant feature. Sound self-assured enough to ease into silence when needed, even as action fails to fully exploit its club energies and emotional sensitivities. The whole suffering the odd technical slip. Like Colin Doran’s mostly successful, if heavily blue toned lights.

Molly Mew in Hot Mess. Image uncredited.

All in all, Hot Mess intrigues and engages. Yet its simulates eroticism like a performative drag show rather than digging down deep and dirty to what Hickson is trying to tap into. Riding the body’s surface rather than plumbing the souls depths. So yes, Hot Mess is something of a hot mess. But only because it's cooking. Experimenting. If only it hadn’t taken the dish out too early and remembered to pre-heat the oven. The inaugural production of this young group of theatre makers, TeoChroí might have jumped in the deep end and are floudering a litte, but they’re not drowning. Discovering, instead, that which cannot be faked, cannot be taught, and cannot be exchanged. This young company shedding its chrysalis. A messy experience. But these plucky theatre makers show enough to suggest they might very soon fly.

Hot Mess by Ella Hickson, presented by TeoChroí Productions & Muirenn Lyons, runs at Smock Alley Theatre until March 14.

For more information visit Smock Alley Theatre