HOW TO MAKE A MESS Comes to Upstairs at the Gatehouse
How To Make a Mess offers a joyful celebration of feeding yourself, through the exploration of recipes and the stories that they hold.
By: Stephi Wild Jan. 21, 2026
Audiences are set to be whisked away by a theatrical recipe like no other with How To Make a Mess: A Totally Unauthorised Love Letter to Nigella Lawson, the new musical making its full-length debut this summer at Upstairs at the Gatehouse. Performances run Thursday 4th June – Sunday 28th June 2026.
Written and composed by Emily Rose Simons (The Inconvenient Miracle, New York New Works & The Tank NYC; The F.ck Am I Doing, Brighton Fringe) and directed by Grace Taylor (In Clay, Upstairs at the Gatehouse; The Glamification of Loki, Southwark Playhouse), this is a charming celebration of cooking, chaos, and learning to self-nourish, through the magic of Nigella Lawson. Produced by Tanya Truman Productions in collaboration with Chromolume, this promises to be an unmissable feast for the senses.
How To Make a Mess offers a joyful celebration of feeding yourself, through the exploration of recipes and the stories that they hold. The show navigates grief, the power of choosing what we let into our lives, and what we leave behind.
After the death of her estranged mother, Natasha Karp’s (Rags, Park Theatre; Bordello, Royal Academy of Dance), Anna, inherits something unexpected: Nigella Lawson’s seminal cookbook How to Eat. Along with the book comes an imagined version of Nigella herself, played by Tanya Truman (Confessions of a Rabbi's Daughter, Backstage The Other Palace Studio) who guides Anna through grief, comfort and change, one recipe at a time. Cooking becomes a way for Anna to reconnect with herself, letting go of old rules around how to live, and learning how small, everyday choices can open up something bigger.
Previously titled Becoming Nigella, this heartwarming musical has been developed through work-in-progress sharing’s at Oxford Playhouse (BEAM 2023), The Other Palace Studio and Manchester Jewish Museum. Blending storytelling, original music and a playful, theatrical embodiment of the iconic Nigella Lawson, the show presents a story which is deeply human.
Writer and composer Emily Rose Simons comments, This show is a love letter to Nigella Lawson. I was inspired by the way her cooking embraces grief, memory, home and pleasure without apology. Nigella’s philosophy is not about restriction, but about embracing what you choose to bring into your life, and that idea has profoundly changed how I live. Through Anna’s journey, I wanted to explore how cooking can reunite us with ourselves, give us permission to want deeply, and help us build a life that feels nourishing rather than prescribed.
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