Hot Mess takes modern angst theatre into the nightclub

Experimental look at contemporary relationships from hot young playwright

This article is from 2010.

Despite feeling increasing pressure to give in and follow every other hot young thing to London, playwright Ella Hickson doesn’t want to leave Edinburgh behind. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Hickson wrote and directed her breakthrough Fringe play Eight in association with the university’s Bedlam Theatre in 2008. It went on to earn positive reviews, win awards and brought Hickson the opportunity to create a similarly well-received follow up last year in Precious Little Talent.

‘It’s certainly not conventional,’ says the 25-year-old Hickson of her third Fringe outing, Hot Mess, a site-specific, nightclub-set four-hander. ‘It’s a slightly mythical story of a pair of twins, one of whom is born with a heart and one of whom is born without, and follows an evening where they’re both out in a nightclub. It looks at our contemporary reasoning that forever doesn’t exist in relationships, and asks what happens to people in their 20s who come to believe that love has a use-by date.’ Expect a typically humorous tale from Hickson, augmented by her experimentation with the in-the-round setting and a live DJ set.

Hawk + Hunter, 226 0000, 8–30 Aug (not 28), 6pm, £9 (£7.50). Previews 6 & 7 Aug, £8 (6.50).