Just when you thought modern culture couldn't get any more absurd, theater kids have found a brand-new way to cope with their relentless eco-anxiety: the climate change musical. Yes, you read that correctly. Instead of holding awkward protests or demanding everyone stop driving, liberal playwrights are now trying to save the planet using jazz hands, tap shoes, and show tunes. It turns out that screaming at regular people about their carbon footprints is a terrible business model, so the creative class is rebranding global warming as a quirky romantic comedy.

The poster child for this new trend is Hot Mess, a musical written by Jack Godfrey and Ellie Coote that just made the leap from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to London. The premise is exactly as bizarre as you’d expect from the creative elite: Earth is portrayed as a single woman with 'a lot to give' (played by Danielle Steers), while Humanity is cast as a charismatic, toxic 'bad boy' who takes everything he can get (played by Morgan Gregory). The creators spent a staggering six years trying to perfect this metaphor, desperately trying to write witty songs filled with double meanings that combine environmental science with jokes about sex and dating. Because nothing screams 'ecological emergency' quite like a musical number about a bad Tinder date.

Interestingly, the creators of Hot Mess openly admit that their initial versions of the show were far too serious and cerebral, which basically meant audiences didn't want to buy tickets. Coote noted that they had to actively find a way to 'disarm' the audience so they wouldn't realize they were sitting through a lecture. It’s a fascinating confession: they know the public is completely exhausted by heavy-handed political sermons, so they have to hide their climate propaganda inside a sugary, comedic pill.

But the grift doesn't stop with just one show. There is now an entire administrative apparatus popping up to support this niche. Finlay Carroll, the assistant producer of Hot Mess, has actually set up a brand-new production company called 'Pollinate' that is solely dedicated to pumping out climate-themed musicals. To justify this, Carroll bizarrely compared their projects to historical classics, claiming that because Les Misérables dealt with tragedy and trauma, there’s no reason musical theatre can't handle global warming. Apparently, fighting the French aristocracy is the exact same thing as singing about recycling.