Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder

There is nothing more exciting than walking in to a brand new show you know nothing about. The excitement doubles as you get to your seat and are greeted by bright electrically charged stage and banging millennial tunes coming out of the auditoriums speaker system. By the time Kathy and Stella Sold a Murder started, I was already hooked by the first note.

Kathy and Stella solve a murder is a comedy musical based around the titular girls and the true crime podcast they work on together, as you can imagine the girls themselves end up intwined in a murder case so deep, they eventually end up as the targets themselves. The show is brilliantly paced with so much genuinely funny material that my mouth hurt from smiling after the first act.

A large chunk of the comedy come from Stella, portrayed masterfully by Rebekah Hinds, whose headstrong and hilarious performance reminds me of a north eastern Nessa from Gavin and Stacey. Her comedic timing is comedic timing is only beaten by her incredible vocals which surprised you every time she opened her mouth.

She was matched on stage by her counterpart Kathy, played by Bronté Barbé. Bronté played the chronically online, overly anxious millennial Kathy to absolute pitch perfect perfection and she had an absolutely perfect dynamic and chemistry with Stella on stage. Bronté’s vocals were equally as impressive and I really did leave the show thinking that award nominations should be flooding in for both of them.

Hannah-Jane Fox plays Felicia Taylor, a superstar in the world of True Crime, and by god does she give it some welly. Hannah adds another legendary role to her repertoire with this portrayal. She is bombastic, eccentric, hilarious and has the singing voice of the world’s sweetest sounding fog horn. She commanded the stage whenever she entered and her comedic timing was on point as well.

The rest of the ensemble is made up of Elliot Broadfoot, Ben Redfern and Elliotte Williams-N’Dure who all portray their roles brilliants and keep the pace of the show moving at a supersonic speed. But a special shoutout must go to Imelda Warren Green who plays her two roles of Erica and Frankie to absolute perfection. She is consistently the funniest person on stage and has absolutely mastered the art of line delivery, with the audience in genuine hysterics whenever she spoke.

From a creative stand point this show more than matched its stella(r) cast. The creative trio of Jon Britain, Matthew Floyd Jones and Fabian Aloise have created a properly special show here. A show where the story gets more twisted and intense and so does the music, a show where you’re on the edge of your seat one moment and then falling back into it with laughter the next and a show where the moment the curtain went down, you were praying they already had a sequel in the works.

You know a show is good when the only criticism I have is that a flashback scene shows Kathy and Stella recording off the telly with a VHS tape in 2010. As someone growing up into teen hood in 2010, I can state that VHS’s were certainly a thing of the past for a good 5 years prior, but that really is the only negative I can think of.

This is a show to die for and I hope it can move to a bigger, better and longer lasting home very soon.

This show was reviewed on the 8th June 2024 at the Ambassadors Theatre, London where it runs until September 2024.  Tickets available here: Home | Kathy And Stella Solve A Murder

***** stars

Chesney Fawkes-Porter

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Photo credit: Pamela Raith