Josephine is putting on a play and it’s really, really good. Mess is a play about an eating disorder, but it’s also more than that. It’s an autobiographical piece bursting at the seams with creativity, where outstanding acting meets pitch-perfect music to create something truly special.
Mess is the end result of a long creative process by writer and performer Caroline Horton, an attempt to tell her own real story of suffering from anorexia. Horton plays Josephine, a meticulous girl who lives her life by post-its and wallcharts and doesn’t want to eat. She’s putting on a play to tell her story with a little help from her best friend Boris and musician Sistahl. In a series of scenes that cover several stages of Josephine’s illness we see how her life changes as she slowly, reluctantly attempts to seek treatment. Every emotion wrought by the condition, negative or positive, is put on display. However, the play never tiptoes around its subject matter. There are jokes about it; indeed, the dark sense of humour running through the piece is what really makes it exceptional. It makes jokes about its subject because it’s something we should confront, not shy away from, and humour is an appropriate way of doing that. It’s a work of staggering honesty and Horton deserves a huge amount of praise for it.
Hannah Boyde plays Boris, Josephine’s friend from university, whom we are assured is there to provide the ‘male’ perspective. Boris’s attempts to help Josephine through her condition are as touching as they are hopelessly amateurish and Boyde commendably resists the temptation to overplay his more emotional moments. She is particularly impressive in an early scene where an incredible state of emotional tension is wrought from just four slices of apple. Seiriol Davies plays Sistahl, the wild-haired man behind the keyboard whose accompaniment is always pitched just right. Davies is responsible for most of the play’s big laughs, especially when he goes off the script’s rails and bursts into a hilariously sarcastic song skewering Josephine’s fastidious personality.
I wouldn’t dream of being so insensitive as to spoil how the play closes, so it will have to suffice to say it is moving, funny, and blew away my doubts that the company wouldn’t be able to appropriately end a show about a lifelong disorder. If you don’t mind paying a little extra then I urge you to make time for this wonderful mess of the tragic and comic that deserves to do very well indeed.
