The storyline of this 2022 musical centres on serial killings by “the Hull decapitator” and features an onstage beheading (shown in shadow play). News from Israel was filtering through as the audience gathered for the press night of its Manchester opening early last week. When terrible things happen, we want to respond appropriately. Sometimes, that means keeping on sharing the joys of life.
Best friends Kathy (Bronté Barbé) and Stella (Rebekah Hinds) deliver a weekly true-crime podcast from Kathy’s mum’s garage in Beverley (no hills – near Hull – nuff said!). It’s the only bright spot in lives marked by humorous self-deprecation and (not always) quiet desperation, until a world-renowned American true-crime author and broadcaster, Felicia Taylor (Jodie Jacobs), is murdered while visiting the area. The pair seize their opportunity to achieve fame and fortune: they will solve the crime!
When the show launched on the Edinburgh fringe last year, its mock-heroic counterpoint of upbeat, brash musical crescendos with the downbeat personalities of its lead characters made it an instant success, along with its shocking-humorous subject matter (“Turn off if it’s not for you,” Kathy and Stella advise their listeners). Now it has been expanded by its creators, Matthew Floyd Jones (music and lyrics and also musical director) and Jon Brittain (book and lyrics and also co-director, with choreographer Fabian Aloise). It is still great fun (and the four-strong live band is terrific), but feels somewhat unbalanced, especially in the first half. If you are going for grand guignol, half-measures are not enough (a scene in a mortuary; an on-stage severed head: both need to be pushed further or pulled right back).
A cracking cast plays the positives with gusto, swiftly seguing set and mood changes, delivering power ballads and comic routines with physical and musical dexterity. Barbé’s Kathy is nervy but determined; Hinds’s Stella, bolshie in insecurity; Imelda Warren-Green, a beyond hysterical superfan; and Jacobs and TJ Lloyd multirole with ease. If the writing wrinkles are smoothed, a hit seems promised.
