The Marriage of Kim K, Arcola Theatre, London, review: Uncategorisable piece of musical meta-theatre

'The Marriage of Kim K' brings reality television and Mozart together in an awkward theatrical hook-up

Yasmin Mireille as Kim K: everywhere her character goes, opera itself has already gone first and taken further

Opening the Arcola’s annual Grimeborn opera festival with a bang (and more innuendo than you can, er, shake a stick at) The Marriage of Kim K brings reality television and Mozart together in an awkward theatrical hook-up that could more truthfully be called Keeping Up With The Komposer.

There’s no doubting the smarts of writer-composer duo leoe&hyde, nor their ambition in conceiving this uncategorisable piece of musical meta-theatre, but this kind of satirical send-up has to be slicker than Kim’s internet-breaking, baby-oiled bottom if it is to come off – something (the fabulous band aside) it just isn’t, yet.

Perhaps it’s a problem with the subject matter. You can’t satirise something that already sends itself up so knowingly, any more than you can sink a fame-hungry celebutante with a sex-tape.

There are some neat ideas: a bassline riff that evolves from the Skype ring tone into Marcellina and Susanna’s deliciously acid duet “Via resti servita” from Figaro, some elegantly rhyming crudery for James Edge’s puppyish Kris Humphries, a final twist so knowing it’s almost dramatic kitsch. But everywhere Kim K goes, opera itself has gone first and taken further – filthier and funnier decades ago (spend an afternoon with Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre if you don’t believe me) than these polite young dramatists yet dare to be.

You might buy a ticket to get your Kardashian kicks, but it’s Mozart’s tunes that give you your money’s worth. His deftly observed humanity has been breaking the opera house since the 1770s, and isn’t anywhere near finished yet.