Published in 1999, Nigella Lawson’s ‘How To Eat’ topped bestseller charts and educated hundreds of thousands of wannabe chefs into learning how to best appreciate food. Yet, in How To Make A Mess, the celebrity cook’s book and the woman herself use food as a grief counsellor in this charming and heartfelt new musical.
Penned by Emily Rose Simons, it is a musical that has been on a long production journey, finally finding its final ingredients in this full version musical which sees a fictional Nigella (Tanya Truman), who has no affiliation to this show, appear in Anna’s (Natasha Karp) kitchen following the death of the latter’s estranged mother. For Anna, the vision of Nigella initially proves a nuisance, but the pair soon strike up a sweet bond as it becomes clear just why Anna struggles to fend and cook for herself.
As Anna, Karp is terrific as a woman desperate to think about anything other than her grief and her fractious familial relationships. Anna’s defiance and stubbornness are never overplayed, with Simons’s writing and Karp’s portrayal careful to remind us that under her deflections is a woman struggling to process her sense of isolation, having lost her mother and maintaining a distant relationship with her father. This erupts to great effect at the end of the first half, where an attempt to make mayonnaise results in eggs flung and utensils tossed in a moment of cathartic chaos that both the character and the musical need.
Meanwhile, Truman’s Nigella is expectantly poised and refined, immaculately presented and effusive in charm and grace. Truman almost floats as Nigella, emphasising her as the Queen of the kitchen, an image reiterated by Christianna Mason’s inventive set design as Nigella beckons a rustic kitchen and a selection of oversized cheeses from the rafters. Both Truman and Karp bounce well off each other here in a two hander that rarely loses focus between them.
Despite the outlandish premise, heightened by Grace Taylor’s terrific direction where the piece introduces Nigella bursting out from one of the kitchen cupboards, it never loses sight of its focus on grief and unprocessed childhood trauma. Studies show that there is a correlation between grief and food habits, yet what this musical leans successfully upon is the feeling of comfort that home cooking can bring, brought to life so deftly here by the daft yet emotive number ‘Roast Chicken’.
Indeed, under David Merriman’s musical direction and arrangement, the production moves well between its tightly written and presented songs. While the dialogue itself threatens to get a little repetitive, the music is far from it, blending the whimsy with the poignant as Anna’s brash bravado erodes under Nigella’s charm.
The musical’s final moments are, much like Nigella’s cooking, subtly and effectively seasoned, with the production sprinkling charm and more than a pinch of sweet humour that will leave even the fussiest of eaters wanting leftovers.
