This year’s Brighton Fringe season could not have got off to a better start for the Nightingale Theatre. ‘Mess’, by Caroline Horton, has proved to be an inspired and, in fact, inspirational choice. It tells the story of Josephine, a young woman struggling with anorexia. Knowing this, it was a very refreshing surprise to laugh out loud so much. Horton’s script is wonderfully clever – it is funny without being flippant, and moving without being gratuitous. Most importantly of all, it is honest. ‘Mess’ brings the difficulties and complexities of living with anorexia out into the open, where they should, but sadly don’t seem to, belong. The overall message is one of hope, though it is a hope tinged with sadness, for Josephine can never be completely free of her anorexia. There is no simple answer provided here for, as Josephine says, ‘It’s not about the food.’ Exactly what it is about remains to be seen, but ‘Mess’ reassures us that there is hope of understanding, and with understanding can come acceptance.
Thankfully, such powerful base material is in deft hands. Caroline Horton is superb as the vulnerable and fragile Josephine. Her portrayal is beautifully considered, never overplayed and overall, hugely relatable. Hannah Boyde as Boris was a perfect, humorous counterpoint to Horton’s Josephine and was in many ways the emotional centre of the piece. Seiriol Davies was also delightfully and uniquely funny as Sistahl, who played keyboards, provided sound-effects and reduced one woman in the second row to hysterics with a well-deployed eyebrow.
Overall, ‘Mess’ is superb, with all the power to change and enlighten that can be expected from a piece of theatre. It worked beautifully in the space, with very little set or scenery. There was a running joke throughout the piece that what we were witnessing was not the finished project, that stunning special effects would be brought into play once it was performed in a ‘real theatre’ (i.e. not above a pub.) I hope there is a future for ‘Mess’ that brings it to a wider audience, but in its current, stripped-down, imaginative form, it could not be better. Regardless of how this project develops, I very much doubt we have seen the last from Caroline Horton and her company.
