“Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder” at Ambassadors Theatre – 17/07/24

Now, there’s no starker realisation that the toddler years are over than when you take your baby girl to see a show and she is laughing uproariously at a well-placed F-bomb in the first scene. There are many well-placed F-bombs in this show, including one that’s backlit and giant as part of a hashtag so I would emphasis the age rating – 12+ – and gently nudge anyone who’s after proper toddler content towards Tales From the Shed or Little Angel Theatre.

That disclaimer out of the way, I’ll go for another, which is that I booked this on a whim because I could not get the trailer song out of my head. So I gave in to advertising and hoped it would stop me singing it. Spoiler: It did not.

So I really wasn’t expecting much. Our seats were £20 each and advertised as “restricted view” so I wasn’t even sure whether we would see anything. I told Eva that, given it was a show about a podcast, then we could always just listen to it like a podcast and not worry too much. As it turned out, we could see most of the action apart from one rather vital bit towards the end but we did have to lean back a bit and look up. If we looked straight ahead, this would be our view:

We were also right by the speakers, so some bits were a little loud but there were advantages too. A surprise character in the second half popped up almost in front of us  – I won’t spoil the surprise by saying who the character was but Eva described their outfit as “iconic”. And we got a few stray winks off the lead actors plus a cardigan pocket full of confetti. That’s pretty much the front-row-for twenty-quid experience….a crick in the neck but a few souvenirs too. And legroom! All balances out.

If you haven’t seen the trailer and aren’t familiar with the concept of the show, it’s about two best friends who have a true crime podcast and aspire to become “true crime famous”. But then they become embroiled in a real-life murder and have to solve it before their own lives are in danger. If you think this sounds a bit like “Only Murders in the Building”, then you’d be right. I’m not sure which came first but the basic concepts and dynamics are very similar. However, where OMITB is very NYC, KASSAM is KUH. That’s Kingston-Upon-Hull or just Hull for the fans. In fact, it’s so Hull that there’s a chance that tourists might not be offended by the swearing because they don’t have any idea that it’s a swear word. Thanks to going to university in Reading with Roast Dinners in London, I am more than familiar with Hull-tinged swearing. And yes, I was very pleased when Kathy of Kathy and Stella revealed that she also went to Reading Uni, even if her experience wasn’t too positive.

Not as excited as I was to see her “Once More With Feeling” mug though. There were three references to Buffy in the show and all of them made me happy but that more than anything.

I know I’m focusing on the small details before I get to the big picture – mugs, accents, outfits – but isn’t that the forensic way? Look at the small details and build up an intelligence picture. We’ll get there.

First though, a few of the themes….at its heart, this is a show about female friendship. You know that any pair of friends who swear undying devotion to each other at the start of a show are gonna fall out about halfway through (just in time for the third coconut) and then make up by the end. That happens here, and it’s a fairly predictable arc about growing up, growing apart and finding a new way to relate. But that’s all fine…from that familiar trope, layers of character and murder-based humour are piled on to make it into something new. When Kathy sings that “if I didn’t have you, I’d die” she mimes someone disembowelling her in gruesome fashion. Stella, the less emotional one, is more non committal about the whole thing and wraps her sentimentality up with a sneaky Rickroll.

Another theme is neurodiversity. In the same song, Stella says “I hated pretty much everyone/’Til I found someone who hated everyone too”. They’re outcasts and nerds – Kathy the flower child and Stella the rock chick – but they’ve found each other and a way to channel that nerdiness into something productive. They have anxiety (Kathy) and dyspraxia (Stella), both of which Eva strongly relates to and it’s good to see some positive representation…..acknowledging the struggles of anxiety but not overdramatising it.

The third theme is the fickleness of pop culture, which is also explored in another of Eva’s favourite murder musicals – “Chicago”. Kathy and Stella start out as fangirls themselves before discovering that their idol isn’t all she’s cracked up to be….and later they briefly become the celebrities themselves. It’s a show that’s made for the internet age, where everything is polarised and turns around quickly. The aforementioned giant hashtag illustrates that nicely and it’s summed up in the song “Approval of Strangers” where Stella sings “From this point I can’t see any danger/in rooting all my self esteem/To the approval of strangers”

But I’m aware that all of this makes it sound very earnest, which it really really isn’t. It’s all handled a bit tongue-in-cheek with lots of sly winks to the audience and fourth wall breaking. The dance numbers are gloriously over-the-top, with the theme song performed in spinning office chairs that come dangerously close to the edge of the stage when you’re sitting just in front of it. A storyline that looks like it’s turning into a love story takes an abrupt turn when Kathy falls in love with the morgue itself, not the man in it, and celebrates atop an autopsy trolley. I’m glad that love story didn’t go anywhere because the actor was also playing Kathy’s mum so it was all getting a bit Oedipal.

The props were similarly over-the-top with not just the confetti but also those giant foam fingers you get at American sports games but they’re all holding murder weapons. There’s crackling energy throughout, even though the seven actors are frantically multi-tasking and constantly diving off the stage only to come back seconds later as a different character. There are red herrings galore and the final reveal – which was the key moment we couldn’t quite see from our seats – was less important than all the build up around it. And, of course, the inevitable escape after it. They’ve been preparing for a hostage situation all their lives, don’t ya know?

Eva laughed a LOT and was quoting it all the way home. She’s now developed what I believe the young folks call a headcanon but we don’t need to go into that. I didn’t see anyone else there in the tween age range but it was a school night so more young people might want to go now it’s school holidays. As long as you don’t mind the swearing, it’s perfect for your nerdy tweens – joyous, funny, modern but with a classic whodunnit theme. See you next murder!

“Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder” is on at the Ambassadors Theatre until 14th September. For tickets and more info, click here

No disclaimer needed as I paid for this one. All opinions remain honest and my own though.