All the fun of the fair: ahead of their London tour dates this summer, we take a merry-go-round ride with Frisky & Mannish to talk about the gig that launched them and the most surreal moment of their career so far.
If you haven’t heard about the pop parodists Frisky & Mannish yet – where have you been?! Although they only started out on the cabaret revival circuit in 2008, the dynamic pair have quickly gone from being ‘ones to watch’ to stars in their own right. They’ve performed all over the world, been raved about on Radio One and twice taken over the 900-seater Lyric Theatre for their packed out Christmas gigs. Made up of flame-haired vocal powerhouse Laura Corcoran (Frisky) and androgynous, keyboard maestro Matthew Jones (Mannish), they’ve become stalwarts of the burgeoning musical comedy scene, fusing together well known songs to create their own comically twisted versions. Think Noel Coward’s ‘I’ve Been to a Marvellous Party’ sung in the Cockney tones of Lily Allen’s ‘I Don’t Know’. Or Peter Andre’s ‘Mysterious Girl’ belted out by Florence and the Machine.
A common reaction to seeing them live for the first time is usually surprise, delight and an overwhelming desire to tell your friends about them. Jones agrees: “There seems to be something about us where if people have liked it, they’ll share it with their friends and say ‘I think you'd love this’” It’s not hard to see why. Musical parodies like ‘Newport State of Mind’ and Weird Al Yankovich's 'Smells Like Nirvana' have always enjoyed widespread appeal. If you know the song and the lyrics are funny enough, you’re going to enjoy it.
But while those piss-takes are rather obvious, Frisky and Mannish are more creative, taking lyrics and vocals from several songs you'd recognise and transforming them into something wholly unexpected. “We try and avoid taking obvious songs that anyone would play with,” says Jones. “They're always accessible but we throw a few leftfield ones in there. If it was all Madonna and Britney then it will be likely other people will have spotted the similarities as well.”
Not only have they got funny ideas, they’ve got the musical talent to back them up with, so as well as giggling you’ll actually be quite impressed. Corcoran can do a whole host of accents and vocal ranges (her Whigfield ballad got rave reviews on Radio One and a tweet from the Danish one-hit wonder herself to say how much she loved their version); while Jones is behind all the arrangements and keyboard wizardry. As he puts it: “I do everything you hear and she does everything that we say. We complement each other very well.”
The pair met at university in Oxford although they were at different colleges. They both got involved with extra-curricular drama clubs and even set up their own student production company. “We kind of did everything together,” says Corcoran. “Well not everything!” (Jones is horrified at the suggestion: “That is actually disgusting.”) She laughingly continues: “We worked together as a production team and then I was in something that Matthew musically directed and he performed in something I directed. Then we did the Oxford Revue together and that was the first time we started coming up with ideas for musical comedy stuff. We found our skills worked together really well.”
Their first outing as Frisky & Mannish came when they helped a friend out for a RADA fundraiser. “We were asked to perform something at the end. Two days before we were going through a book of pop songs and we thought we'd try and do them in a way that was unique,” says Corcoran. “We were looking at the lyrics and I wondered what it would be like if we sang ‘Papa Don't Preach’ as an aria. We changed the styles of songs initially and then it grew from there.”
It did indeed. After that they were booked do a gig and then another and another. They started out on the cabaret circuit but after word got out about the charismatic girl/boy double act doing something hilarious and innovative with pop songs, they started getting booked for comedy gigs. In 2009, their first Edinburgh show School of Pop, received thirteen five star reviews and transferred to the West End for a sell-out run. Their second show The College Years was equally successful. They’ve since performed it at the Perth Fringe Festival and are currently touring it across the UK. They’ve even played the Sydney Opera House, a career highlight for Corcoran: “It was two weeks over the Mardi Gras and that was the first gig we had in Australia. Our flat was massive, floor to ceiling views over the harbour bridge, our posters all over bus stops - it was a real pinch yourself moment.”
With another show on the way and a devoted fanbase growing by the day, something tells me Frisky & Mannish are going to have to get used to a few more pinches on the horizon.
See Frisky and Mannish: The College Years tour at Jackson's Lane (5th-7th May) and Southbank Udderbelly (26th May, 2nd & 16th & 23rd June, 7th July).
Photo credit: Alex Brenner
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