Musical Murder Mystery Mayhem!
“I was fired for giving a ten year old a navel piercing. “
Stella
Three of theatre’s most popular genres are musicals, murder mystery and comedy. John Brittain and Matthew Floyd Jones have collaborated on all three in one crazy show, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder! The show and its growing fan base started at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022, returned and toured in 2023 and now is on at the Ambassadors in the West End for three months until mid September.
It is a quirky kaleidoscope of a show based on two likeable but slightly odd women who work on a podcast about murder from a garage. Kathy (Bronté Barbé) and Stella (Rebekah Hinds) have known each other from school. The show is a lot of fun and the actors have wonderful singing voices.
Kathy’s auntie Vanessa (Elliot Broadfoot) tries to encourage Kathy to get a proper job and Stella’s sister Frankie (Imelda Warren-Green) is similarly fed up with feeding and housing Stella. They worship the crime writer and detective Felicia Taylor (Hannah Jane Fox) and go to her book signing where she dismisses their detective skills and podcast. Felicia’s claim to fame was solving the murder of the Hull Decapitator.
Kathy and Stella are confronted by Detective Inspector Sue Shaw (Elliotte Williams-N’Dure) who tells them that there has been another murder and that they were two of the last people to see the victim. I loved Detective Shaw’s admissions that the police might not always be perfect. Of course, for our two amateur sleuths to be as closely involved a current murder case as this, the temptation is to start solving it before the police can and Detective Shaw warns them off.
The stage has to serve as a variety of locations but the backdrop of a map with lit up connections is always interesting. Kathy and Stella visit the hospital where the victim is in the mortuary and Kathy meets Justin Norris who was in her Home Economics class at school. It appears that their podcast is very popular with the mortuary attendants and the fan worship is expressed by a dance with red fans. Stella is mobbed by another mortuary attendant Erica Knott (Imelda Warren-Green) who worships her.
Kathy and Stella narrow down their list of suspects and target publican David Slatter (Ben Redfern) in an exciting chase. The rocks songs are pumping and you can hear every word of the lyrics. Kathy and Stella will fall out and then thankfully make up. This madcap show is very entertaining. I suspect we may see Kathy and Stella again in another musical comedy mystery!
Musical Numbers
Act One
Prologue
Kathy & Stella’s Murder Podcast
We’re Gonna Wow Felicia Taylor
True Crime Famous
If I Didn’t Have You (I Would Die)
Part of the Story
Fuck! We Don’t Know What We’re Doing
Never Felt So Alive
True Crime Famous 2
Everyone’s On Our Wavelength
The Approval of Strangers
If I Did It
Guilty as Sin
Act Two
Read About a Murder
Murder Con
Can’t Trust Anyone
Sue’s Song
The Show is Over
We’re Gonna Wow Felicia Taylor (Reprise)
The One Whodunnit
See You Next Murder
Production Notes
Kathy and Stella Solve A Murder!
Book by Jon Brittain
Music by Matthew Floyd Jones
Lyrics by Jon Brittain, Matthew Floyd Jones
Directed by Jon Brittain, Fabian Aloise
Cast
Starring:
Ben Redfern
Bronté Barbé
Hannah Jane Fox
Imelda Warren-Green
Rebekah Hinds
Elliot Broadfoot
Elliotte Williams-N’Dure
Creatives
Directors: Jon Brittain, Fabian Aloise
Choreographer: Fabian Aloise
Designer: Cecilia Carey
Musical Supervisor and Orchestrator: Charles Ingles
Lighting Designer: Peter Small
Sound Designer: Dan Samson, Tingying Dong
Musical Director: Andrew Hilton
Information
Running Time: Two hours 20 minutes with an interval
Booking until 14th September 2024
Theatre:
Ambassadors Theatre
West Street
London WC2H 9ND
Phone: 03330 096 690
Website: theambassadorstheatre.co.uk
Tube Leicester Square
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge
at the Ambassadors
on 13th August 2024
