LMH alumnus Matthew Floyd Jones (2003, Classics and English) is preparing to transition his award-winning Edinburgh Fringe musical, Kathy & Stella Solve A Murder! to London’s West End this summer.
Kathy & Stella Solve A Murder! is a musical comedy about best friends Kathy and Stella, hosts of Hull’s least successful true crime podcast, who are launched into a real-life whodunnit when their favourite author is killed while in town to revisit the case of the notorious Hull Decapitator serial killer. The unlikely heroes set out to crack the case (and hopefully become global podcast superstars) before the killer strikes again.
Matthew and his writing partner Jon Brittain co-wrote the comedy during lockdown, with Jon crafting the dialogue while Matthew wrote the music and co-wrote the song lyrics. It is produced by the multi Olivier Award-winners behind Fleabag, Baby Reindeer and The 39 Steps.
Kathy & Stella Solve A Murder won Musical Theatre Review’s Best Musical Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022, a second win for Jon and Matthew, who took away MTR’s inaugural prize for A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) in 2017. After successful runs in Bristol and Manchester, it was announced in February that Kathy & Stella Solve A Murder! would transfer to the West End this summer.
This is an impressive achievement for a musical that came about almost by accident, as Matthew explains: “My writing partner and I were actively looking for an idea to develop into a full-length fully-integrated musical, but everything we conceived felt too huge and heavy to get off the ground.
“Then the first lockdown came in 2020, and with it the great levelling of all previous plans - just to distract ourselves, we started bouncing silly small ideas back and forth. One such text was "Kathy & Stella's Murder Podcast?" which quickly turned into a theme tune before growing into a colourful romp about two true crime-obsessed girls from Hull who stumble into a real true crime situation.
“Jon wrote the dialogue, I took care of the music, and between us we crafted the lyrics. We thought, 'Great, when the Edinburgh Fringe finally comes round again, we've got a fun little hour-long show to get us back up and running.' We did not think, ‘We've just begun our journey to the West End.’ But it turns out that's exactly what we did, and I'm thrilled about it!”
Kathy & Stella Solve A Murder! is playing at the Ambassadors Theatre from Saturday 25 May to Saturday 14 September.
Image at top: Matthew Floyd Jones (left), Jon Brittain (centre) and Fabian Aloise (right) alongside a photo from Kathy and Stella Solve A Murder! featuring Bronté Barbé (left, as Kathy, and Rebekah Hinds (right, as Stella).
