Theatre review: Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder!

I've listened to many podcasts since the pandemic but they've never included the true crime ones that seem to be the most popular genre out there. Still, I know how big they are and can see some of the attraction of digging into cold cases for new clues - after all the mix of morbid curiosity and trying to find sense in the senseless has always been popular in other media, why not this one? I suppose this means a musical about a true crime podcast was only a matter of time, and Jon Brittain (book & lyrics) and Matthew Floyd Jones' (music & lyrics) Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder Exclamation Mark had been a big Edinburgh fringe hit before this London transfer. Kathy (Bronté Barbé) and Stella (Rebekah Hinds) grew up at a time when the hunt for a serial killer called the Hull Decapitator was dominating the city, and this fed into a love for all things gory that turned into a lifelong friendship.

Now thirty, they're unemployed and without much purpose other than the true crime podcast they record together, and which they hope will some day have more listeners than just that one bloke on Twitter who responds to every episode by telling them to eat dicks and die.

When Felicia (Hannah Jane Fox,) author of the book that identified the Decapitator, does a signing in Hull, the two women think this is their chance for a celebrity endorsement that'll finally put their podcast on the map. Instead Felicia is murdered and her head is sent to Kathy & Stella, leaving them with their own true crime to solve.

This is a show that shows its origins as a fringe hit that got extended for the West End pretty clearly, but is still a lot of fun. Of course thanks to Tom Wells we've known for years how funny a deadpan gag delivered in a Hull accent can be and that's something Brittain and Floyd Jones have focused on for the show's comedy - Hinds is the absolute MVP at this, lugubriously throwing out one-liners all night. But she and Barbé don't get the show all to themselves as there's a busy and energetic ensemble keeping the energy up: Elliot Broadfoot as a mortuary technician, Ben Redfern as the prime suspect, Elliotte Williams N'Dure as a jaded police inspector and especially Imelda Warren-Green as an obsessive fan all get their scene-stealing moments.

Musically this is a lot less exciting, and in the first act especially Floyd Jones' tunes would struggle to get feet tapping, let alone stick in anyone's head. There's also a sense of fence-sitting in terms of the dodgy subject - this may be a comedy but I felt like there could be at least a bit of a nod to the fact that so many people find profit and/or entertainment in other people's misery, or alternatively go entirely the other way and go wild with blood and gore, but Brittain and Fabian Aloise's production keeps that fairly tame as well.

After the interval things flip a bit as the musical numbers actually improve, but you can also feel the padding of trying to turn a short fringe show into a full two-act musical as the story starts to drag out and there's longer gaps between gags. In fact as far as comedy goes this may just be suffering in comparison - I went with Ian, who I'd recently taken to the return of Police Cops, and he said that might just have ruined comedy for him forever because his expectations were now so high. Still, if Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder! isn't the funniest show ever staged that's hardly the worst criticism it could get, and it's certainly full of fun moments.

Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder! by Jon Brittain and Matthew Floyd Jones is booking until the 14th of September at the Ambassadors Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.