Micro-waa-vee – the musical
A new show about Nigella Lawson opens in Highgate
Three London Jewish creative women are set to wow foodies and lovers of odd pronunciations alike, in the intriguingly titled How to Make a Mess: A Totally Unauthorised Love Letter to Nigella Lawson.
It’s a kitchen-set wistful comedy musical, written by Emily Rose Simons and starring Tanya Truman as Nigella, to whom she bears a disturbing resemblance, and Natasha Karp as Anna.
The Anna character is trying to process her feelings for her estranged mother, who has just died, and she does so through her conjuring up of Britain’s Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson. We meet when Anna, brought up as a secular Jew and unfamiliar with post-death funeral customs — particularly that of shiva — chooses a different route to mark her bereavement.
The seed for this ambitious show was planted in a casual conversation seven years ago between Simons and Truman, when they were both involved in an event at a cinema in Hampstead. Truman says: “It was a very loose suggestion: we were brainstorming and talking about musical theatre, and I was doing impressions of Nigella. I told Emily she should write a musical about Nigella — and I could play her”.
Simons laughed, but the thought developed. It took some time, and the idea went through various workshop sessions, including one in Oxford and an abbreviated version at Manchester’s Jewish Museum. But the now full-length show will run at Highgate’s Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre for most of June — and Simons, Truman and Karp are hopeful it might even transfer to a bigger theatre and a wider audience.
I was fascinated to know what Nigella herself thinks of the idea, but the three aren’t yet aware. They have made a point of keeping Nigella’s “people” up to speed with their plans for the show, and would be thrilled if the food writer and presenter herself would turn up on one night of their run — but at the moment they have not heard directly from her. “She is always welcome”, says Simons.
Besides the basic narrative, there are Broadway-diva-style songs and several cooking set-pieces on stage — though, disappointingly, the audience will be encouraged to eat before the show, as food safety regulations won’t permit Nigella’s creations to be served en masse in the theatre. However, Truman said that negotiations were taking place with the Gate’s bar to serve a special Nigella cocktail so that people can get into the spirit of the evening.
Simons has had a tough job balancing Lawson’s well-known love of bacon against her own desire to write about recipes with a kosher flavour for the stage. “I didn’t want Jewish actresses to be in contact with bacon,” she says, “but I had to refer to it, because that woman does love bacon.”
Karp, playing Anna, says her role looks at the issues of “finding oneself through food, love and forgiveness”, and says that as a Jewish woman she is keen to celebrate her community on stage.
All three women say that working on a show about Lawson has inspired them to be much more “experimental” in their own kitchens.
Given Lawson’s often peculiar pronunciations — the most recent almost got its own social media account with her version of “micro-waa-vee” (microwave) — I am fascinated to know if anything similar has been incorporated in this show. All three women offer broad grins. So that’s a yes — probably.
Since timing is everything, How To Make A Mess has struck publicity gold with the real-life announcement that Nigella is to take over from Prue Leith as a judge on The Great British Bake Off — a reveal made only weeks before the Gatehouse show was announced.
“We didn’t know about it,” says Simons, “and there aren’t any references to Bake Off in the show. We are focused mainly on the Nigella who wrote How to Eat. And we are happy to present a positive Jewish British show”.
is at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate from 4 – 28 June.
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