A Killer Party is a new movie musical, written in 2020 with social distancing and online streaming in mind. It follows a group of actors in Blackpool who turn up for a read through of Varthur McArthur’s house but Varthur ends up killed and traffic warden and Detective hopeful Justine Case is called to the house to solve the murder. She separates the suspects and sends them to individual rooms throughout the house as she makes her way round to question them.

This cast is packed full of musical theatre big names. Rachel Tucker, Cedric Neal, Emma Salvo, Oscar Conlon-Morrey, Ben Forster, Debbie Kurup, Jason Manford, Lucas Rush, Amara Okereke, Ashley Samuels and Harriet Thorpe. All of the characters in A Killer Party are larger than life and these performers rise to challenge. Rachel Tucker gets her big diva moment whilst getting to be utterly silly as the deceased’s wife and Oscar Conlon-Morrey appears in numerous costumes in a wonderful music video montage during his song.

The show is filmed in a socially distanced manner with clever editing and direction by Benjio Sperring. He brings the scenes together well and whilst Salvo jokes that all the rooms that she enters looks the same from the performers reactions would would be hard pressed to tell that they were not in the same room.

The show is a fun one with plenty of puns, stagey jokes and enough twists and turns between the suspects to keep the pace quick. Whilst it was originally written by Rachel Axler and Kait Kerrigan to air in the USA the show has been adapted for a UK audience and all of the jokes land. With a witty script the score by Jason Howland and Nathan Tyssen had a lot to live up to. The title number, ‘A Killer Party’ is remarkably catchy and ‘Shipload of Fools’ sung by Oscar Conlon-Morrey got me dancing on my sofa and grinning. Big Cat sung by Ben Forster was also brilliantly cheesy and Waiting for my Cue was firmly rooted in musical theatre but with a big tongue in its cheek. It is the type of cast recording that I will be putting on to dance around the house in or bop along to in my car!

Whilst the show is designed as 9, 10 minute episodes I binged watched them all back to back. By my own admission I can struggle with maintaining concentration during streamed shows but this kept my interest throughout due to its wit, high energy and catch songs. Having seen a lot of Streamed Theatre over the last year A Killer Party has to be the one that left me with the biggest smile on my face.

A Killer Party is streaming from the 3-30th May. Tickets are £25 for the whole season or £2.99 an episode. To find out more about the show then you can visit their website here.

If you like this review you might also like my review of Soft Sessions, my quiz on West End Theatre and my review of Come From Away.