Review: The Marriage of Kim K

The Marriage of Kim K is a blend between a Kardashian musical and a Mozart opera. A fabulously outlandish idea, it had me wondering both: how has nobody ever thought of something like this before? And why would anybody think of something like this?!

The Gogglebox-inspired musical comes from music/theatre duo Leoe & Hyde, who, evidently, like to make musicals for the 21st century.

The story follows a young couple, Mike and Amanda, fighting over what to watch: Keeping Up with the Kardashians, or The Marriage of Figaro? This was pretty straightforward in the first act, with focus being shifted between the three couples: Mike and Amanda, Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, and the Count and the Countess. Something I loved was how similarities were drawn between the three very different couples.

The second act is where things really went wild – mostly a success. The first act ended on a cliffhanger, suggesting a complete genre change – and I don’t mean between musical comedy and opera, but from real-life to sci-fi!? Whilst the show’s ideas were awesome, and I enjoyed most individual scenes, the second act did feel a little clunky at times, jumping from one thing to the next. This also resulted in it sometimes being a little perplexing, though that, no doubt, drew the audience in further.

The scene changes could be a bit awkward and should be worked on a little. There were several blackouts and pauses, which felt out of place. This is a musical – scene changes could have involved song, dance, or anything, really. The musical had a real fantastical, whimsical feel to it, so the simple scene changes did feel a little out-of-place.

The staging was great. There was a sofa in the middle and two large frames, representing TV screens, at either side, with the Kardashians in one and the Count and Countess in the other. In the second act, this was flipped around, with the audience now facing the back of the sofa, and the TV screens having swapped around. Indeed, this musical had great attention to detail.

Undoubtedly, the musical’s greatest success was its music – both the brilliant music itself and the masterful lyrical content. There was not a single song that I did not like; most of them had me delightfully amused. The songs were witty and catchy, and I had the words “I’m Kim Kardashian” in my head the whole way home!

Jack Herauville did a great job of playing the male lead. I laughed both with and at him; he was likeable and funny. I felt that leading lady Rebecca McAuley’s performance, however, lacked energy. I get that she was supposed to be a simple everywoman, but it did seem, at times, that she was not giving it her all. It did not matter that she did not have a stellar singing voice like the opera stars; her character did not require that, but she did need a little more enthusiasm. She is clearly a talented actress, she just needs to have a bit more vavavoom!

The Count (John Ieuan Jones) and Countess (award-winning actress Charlotte Trepess) were both fantastic. Their operatic skills were mind-blowing. They seemed too operatically talented to feature in a musical comedy, but I’m glad to have been blessed with their beautiful singing voices.

Ben Storey also gave a good performance as Kris Humphries; he looks nothing like him, but that did not matter, because he did a great job of playing the archetypal gym-obsessed, dumb jock.

The star of the show was the woman who played the star in the show; Megan Postle’s performance of Kim Kardashian was absolutely hilarious. It reminded me of Nasim Pedrad’s acclaimed impression of her on SNL. Her nasally voice was brilliant. Perhaps my favourite scene was when Postle screeched “noooooo,” and the remote kept rewinding, resulting in that same scene being shown over and over again, as part of a song. It was superb.

Indeed, the musical had many of these fantastic scenes. It was flawed, but the positives far outweighed the negatives; things such as the wonderful writing, sassy songs and, of course, the marvellous and perfectly-casted Megan Postle, would make audience members who are not there to review the show forget about its faults. I will end by saying The Marriage of Kim K has superb potential, and I could really see it being a full-scale musical one day.