#Mooky Cornish

[thewidowstanton]

The Widow’s best of 2020

Well… during a year when we haven’t been able to see many live shows we’ve still managed to find lots of things we loved. Here are some of them; live shows are indicated, otherwise we watched them online – our grateful thanks go to all the companies that streamed their productions for free – listened to them or read them. You’ll notice that our list includes lots of women and the occasional man.

But before that we start with a new category…

PERSON OF THE YEAR: Circus director Carol Gandey (pictured) of Gandeys Circus. If UK touring circus – an artform championed by The Widow’s Liz Arratoon for more than 25 years – is to survive Covid-19, it will be in large part to her. Gandeys had produced three shows before the UK’s March lockdown, two of which never had a chance to open, incurring hundreds of thousands of pounds in costs. It then provided accommodation and living expenses for 33 stranded artists, and meanwhile developed an air-flow working model for circus – trialling an opening at Butlins – which gave the government enough confidence to allow circuses to reopen with reduced seating capacities.  

Carol constantly lobbied the government and the Arts Council for aid – as did other industry figures – and her application to the Arts Council Recovery Fund, which was said to be exceptional, resulted in a £1.1 million grant; the largest amount awarded to any UK circus company. Gandeys used some of the money to cover the losses due to the lockdown, and to fund a survival package that included some reduced-capacity performances this autumn, as well as funding the production costs for reopening in 2021.

From one strong and inspirational woman to another…

BEST EXTRAVAGANZA: Rhianna’s Savage X Fenty Volume 2 TV special for her lingerie range. Wow! What a mix! This was an explosion of creativity; part fashion show, part dance show, part gig, part circus, part ad, and included a simply stunning floral set. Add a cast of big names, a wonderfully diverse choice of dancers and models, no expense had been spared. Exciting, fresh and really impressive.

BEST LIVE SHOW: Zebra, a solo show by juggling genius Wes Peden, which was part of the London International Mime Festival at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room.

BEST CIRCUS SHOW: The really inventive CAPAS by Circo Eia (pictured) – so great to see so many new ideas, and here’s our chat with cast member Francesca Lissia. Plus the intricate and dazzling Twenty Twenty by Gandini Juggling. 

BEST DANCE SHOW: Faust by the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, featuring the spectral Bernice Coppieters (pictured) as Death; and Cia de Dança Deborah Colker’s super-stylish Belle, inspired by the novel Belle de Jour.

BEST KIDS’ SHOW: Little Angel Theatre’s hat trilogy, presented by puppeteer Ian Nicholson; an adaptation of the picture books by Jon Klassen: I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat and We Found a Hat.

BEST COSTUME: The Widow has always considered costumes to be extremely important. As Federico Fellini said: “Don’t forget that costumes, like dreams, are symbolic communication,” and frankly we wish more artists would make the sort of effort Dua Lipa made on Saturday Night Live!

Staying with costumes… slightly less glamorous, but an effort was made by Hot Mess in party-sketch work-in-progress Dirty Stop Outs.

MOST EXCITING: Meeting Marina Abramović in the foyer at London’s Barbican before the Efterklang gig.

BEST SHOWGIRLS: Seen in the 1972 film Un Flic; costumes by Colette Baudot. Also featured is a stunning black dress, worn by Catherine Deneuve, designed by Yves Saint Laurent.

BEST BURLESQUE: Lady of Burlesque, starring Barbara Stanwyck, who wears costumes by the great Edith Head.

BEST FILM CREDITS: Sudden Fear, starring Joan Crawford as a scorned – but impeccably dressed – woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown! 

BEST CASTAWAY: Hard to choose between Rupert Everett, Ian Wright or Daniel Radcliffe, who all washed up on BBC Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs.

BEST SHOWBIZ STORY: Catherine Russell – on Outlook, BBC Radio 4 – who has played the same role for 32 years and said the same lines more than 13,000 times. She holds the world record for the most theatre performances in the same role; Margaret Thorne Brent – a psychiatrist who might also be a cold-blooded killer – in the off-Broadway play Perfect Crime.

BEST TV SERIES: It was a close call with The Queen’s Gambit, but our choice is the utterly brilliant My Brilliant Friend; the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s series of Neapolitan novels. 

BEST DOCUMENTARY: The Bee Gees – How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.

BEST CABARET PIC: The ever-lovely Eve Ferret at the Crazy Coqs in London. Picture: @marc_t_albert 

BEST SHOWBIZ MEMOIR: John Cooper Clarke’s I Wanna Be Yours.

BEST SHOWBIZ BIOGRAPHY: Jon Gresham: The Life and Adventures of a Sideshow Showman, Fire-Eater and Magician by Edwin A Dawes, Pat Gresham and Jon Marshall. This is a painstakingly detailed and enthralling account of Gresham’s life, lovingly compiled by his widow and friends from material written by Gresham himself. Want one? Details below.

BEST SHOWBIZ AUTOBIOGRAPHY: The heartbreaking Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy by Dorothy Dandridge and Earl Conrad. The revealing autobiography of Hollywood’s first African-American sex symbol and screen legend.

BEST GIG: Sevdaliza’s only show this year, streamed live from The Hague's Koninklijke Schouwburg (Royal Theatre) to a global audience.

BEST SONG: Désormais by Charles Aznavour, which was used as the title track for the film Chambre 212 or On a Magical Night.

BEST ALBUM COVER: Charles Aznavour’s Désormais. That hat!

MOST CHARMING: The sheep invasion during Isabella Rossellini’s show Sex and Consequences, which was streamed live from her farm in Bellport, Long Island, USA. Yes, her live sheep! 

BEST TWITTER CIRCUS PIC: The stunning Crystal Pyramids by Severus posted by @PablosCircus.

BEST LIVE COMEDY: Myra Dubois – star of Britain’s Got Talent – at The Poodle Club in Sydenham. Some of us recognised the greatness of Rotherham’s finest before she was famous!

GONE TOO SOON: Actor Chadwick Boseman (pictured) at just 43, funnymen Eddie Large, Tim Brooke Taylor and Bobby Ball, and dancer, choreographer and actor Ann Reinking.

MOST MISSED: Davenports magic shop that closed at the end of January – but you luckily can still order from it online – and a more recent casualty, after 96 years, London’s beautiful Café de Paris.

MOST DISAPPOINTING: Madonna’s Madame X show at the London Palladium. Goodness, this was shoddy! She was so incapacitated that she simply marked all the dance moves and had to be helped around the set, and up and down the stairs. The tickets were exorbitantly expensive and no one paid to see someone hobbling about onstage. We paid to see Madonna!

But let’s not end on a sour note…

BEST SHOWBIZ MASK: Shirley Bassey’s fabulous sequinned number!

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL: Some things we’re looking forward to include:  The 45th London International Mime Festival, which will be screening free-to-view videos of shows from past LIMF editions, running an extended workshop series with live and online classes, and hosting a series of talks.

We’re also awaiting the new series of Call My Agent, which starts on Netflix on 21 January 2021.

And, last but by no mean least, one of the world’s truly funny clowns, Gloria – also known as Mooky Cornish – has been busy training her chickens – Kukuruzza (pictured top), who has been taking piano lessons, and the athletic Galina – and will be touring the Canadian prairies with them next summer. Now that’s something we’d love to see! Picture: Nichole Huck

Better days ahead!

*Jon Gresham book is available via PayPal from jon@magiccarpettheatre.com: P&P incl, UK – £25, EU – £30, USA tracked – $52

[therecordnerd]

Mooky the clown from La Soiree posing with Roxy from BARC (adopted) for their holiday postcard. Come check out the show, heres the link: http://la-soiree.com

[thewidowstanton]

Mooky Cornish, clown

Since she was a teenager in rural Ontario, Canada, Mooky Cornish has been fascinated by clowning. Her love of performing has led to her appearing for five years, in two stints, in Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai, with Pickle Family Circus and, in recent years, with acclaimed cabaret show La Soirée, which returns to London next week. As her character Gloria, a wide-eyed glamorous star (at least in her own eyes), she is genuinely funny, with a brilliant command over an audience. The Widow has known her for years and always loves seeing her perform. Adrian Arratoon spoke to her, while she was spending a couple of days in Montreal, to find out what she has been up to lately, and how a girl from the sticks became a global performer.

When did you first perform in public? Other than some really small, small things, my first gig was when I was 13. There was a jazz festival that was just starting up in our village and I was really into jazz at the time. The tickets were 45 dollars, which was a bit too steep for my paper round. So I went down to the festival organisers and said, ‘Hey, how about I entertain the kids for the afternoon and I get a free pass for the festival?’, and they said: “Sure.” So I took a little friend with me, and we put some costumes on, went down to the site and entertained the kids. I had so much fun and playing with the kids that I completely forgot about the jazz until about seven thirty at night when I finally remembered, ‘Oh, yeah, the festival!’. I only watched half an hour of music, then it was all over.

But what led you to perform in the first place? Had you been in school plays? I was always really interested in performing; I always auditioned for school plays but I never got into any of them [laughs]…

Oh, that's the saddest story I’ve ever heard! … I never made it. So I had to do my own thing.

And that rejection's fuelled you for life! Is that it? I dunno, ha ha. I guess so, in a way. It's very Gloria. In fact, I did get into one play, West Side Story, when I was 16. There weren't loads of opportunities to perform in a small farming village. But I don’t known why I got into clowning. I remember seeing Victor Borge on the television once when I was around 12 or so and then I got passionate about practising piano after that. And I saw one other clown on the television, Denis Lacombe from Cirque du Soleil, and that blew my mind as well. That was the first time I realised it was a profession, ‘Oh, that's cool!’.

Growing up in a rural village, how did you make the leap to training in performance? Presumably there weren't loads of workshops there? Ha ha, no, no, there weren't. There was a yearly Christmas party and a yearly maple syrup festival. My parents split and all that, sold the farm and we moved to the city, to Ottawa, and I went to a performing-arts high school straight away. That was my saving grace. This school was a real eye-opener. I'd never seen such liberated kids, wearing punk T-shirts with swear words; there were paintings on every hallway, and choirs and orchestras rehearsing. At our arty-farty arts school the equivalent of the American football team was the improv club. I auditioned for that and got in! The coach, Jane Moore, was marvellous; she trained us very hard. We worked every day after school, read the newspapers and made comedy about it. We studied all these styles, like Monty Python, Gilbert & Sullivan so we had different genres to play with. She used to work us hard and consequently we won the National Improv Games seven years in a row. We were very passionate about it. At the same time I got a job with an entertainment company, working mainly with children, your traditional clown, balloon animals, face-painting magic thing, and that was marvellous training as well. I was performing every day; I was missing school to go for gigs. I wasn't partying at the weekends; I was up at 5am putting clown make-up on and going to gigs.

After that I came here to Montreal and started learning stand-up comedy, just to learn to write comedy. I was never passionate about stand-up as a form but I knew it was a means to learn to write, and that was helpful. Then I went to Toronto where there was more clown going on, a theatre-resource centre and Sue Morrison and others were teaching buffon and clown and other stuff. And from there I went to an international school of physical theatre in northern California, called Dell'Arte, and that's where I did four years of very formal training and apprenticing, and went straight into their company.

And I didn't realise you went to conservatoire for piano. What level were or are you at? Well, it's a bit lower now than it was, unfortunately, but I was studying piano at university. I wouldn’t have made it as a concert pianist because I didn’t have enough consistent training all the way through but I definitely could have been in a quartet or something to that extent.

So you're back with La Soirée in London, doing Gloria. How has she changed over the years? It's been a real evolution. I’ve been clowning since I was 14 so it's evolved over a long time. Originally, a friend was a very good bull-whipper and I thought she needed a sexy assistant, and of course I thought that should be me. I found a little negligée and some underclothes then went up to a festival in Edmonton. I didn’t even have a wig then, to be honest, and luckily a wonderful drag queen up there, Dan Hagen, loaned me a blonde wig. So that was the first day of Gloria, just a lot of falling down in high heels, no talking or anything. Then it got a little but more refined when I worked with Varekai all those year. Then I went to work for the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco. It was a theatre circus show and I needed to speak and I needed a name and all of that and that’s where the name came from and the voice evolved. It was around the same time that I created the romance act with Cal McCrystal, where words are written all over my body. That was the first run of that act. I did it for a month, and Gloria has been developing stronger personalities from then.

Are you able to do things with Gloria that you would never do yourself? Yeah, most definitely. I think that’s the beauty of clown; it’s just you with no censor and no inhibitions, no: ‘I shouldn’t do that, that's ridiculous’. I often think about that when I'm walking in the street and past a car that’s playing Michael Jackson or something; I’d be a bit shy to dance but as Gloria I would definitely get down and have a dance.

A lot of people stay with Cirque du Soleil almost for life, like a full-time job. Was it difficult to leave the safety net or did you find it a bit constricting? I was ready to leave; it was a taxing job, it's ten shows a week and that's pretty much all you can do. You don't have a lot of time outside of that. It was really wonderful opportunity at the time and I learnt everything I wanted to learn. It was perfect for what it was but for me it was never the be-all and end-all; I always had other aspirations.

When Liz interviewed you in 2009 you told her when you came to Europe for the first time it was interesting for you to learn about how audiences reacted in different countries. How do they react differently, and how long does it take you to get into your stride? It takes less than a week; just a few shows. Your material's staying the same, you just have to listen to where they’re reacting and change the emphasis. Some countries they’ll laugh more at the fall and another country might laugh more at the reaction to the fall, so you change the emphasis and accents and how much time you spend on something. In London I can fall a lot more.

Do we like the falling here? Yeah they love it – but only if it's in good timing; London's a stickler for good timing. I love playing London almost more than anywhere else in a way because the audiences are the most in tune with my own sense of comedy. I feel when I play London I don’t have to alter my sense of comedy, I play exactly what I think is funny, and London's just right on it; a very astute audience. It's very fulfilling to get a laugh in London. It makes me feel very good.

Do you prefer doing a smaller, more intimate show with La Soirée than the enormodomes you performed in with Varekai? Most definitely. I love the Spielgeltent; you can see everyone's faces and feel the energy that's created. I love playing in a circle like that; when everyone's in a circle it's the traditional way of being; it's what takes us back to being around the fire telling stories, you know? Even if you don’t have a lot of power that day you get it back when you’re in the tent, the way geometrically the energy is concentrated and it bounces back and forth so it's a very good feeling.

I was once one of your 'victims' for your romance act and enjoyed it tremendously! How do you go about choosing someone to take up on stage? I just kind of look around softly, with ‘soft eyes’, if you will, and also pick up on a vibration. I kind of get a feeling from humans [laughs]. In London I don’t really need to scope out the crowd, I just go out cold, because most people are used to public speaking at school and such and the English have a good sense of humour and play and don’t mind being foolish. But in other countries I’ll hide up in the lighting booth or on the balcony and watch the crowd's reaction to an act before mine, then I can get a sense of if someone's laughing or smiling – not too hilarious, mind, because you don't want Mr Australian Ham-bone either; someone who takes over the show. A good volunteer has a willingness to play. That's all it takes.

You're really funny. Who makes you laugh or inspires you? Roberto Benigni: I think he's marvellous. Lately I’ve been trying to crack into film – making more films; that's the next direction for Gloria. She wants to be a film star now…

Of course she does! …so I’ve been watching Jacques Tati. He doesn’t necessarily make me a laugh but I really enjoy it. I like the way he sees humour in the world around him; he's not always so egocentric, and I really like that sensibility. And Benigni is very silly and he has a lot of heart in what he does.

So are you always travelling or do you have a home to go back to? I'm always travelling. Always. It has its benefits. Sometimes when we're out on the road my colleagues will say, ‘Oh, I miss my cat’, or ‘I miss my bed’ but I never have that problem, ha ha. I'm always pretty content where I am. It makes me buy less. I don’t mind looking at things but I have no desire to buy them cos I have to carry them, and that gets heavy.

What have been the highlights of the past few years? For me the thing about La Soirée that is such a treat is each other. We have such a nice time and it's such a nice group of people. We have a good laugh every day. We get to work and have a laugh with each other; it's a super-fortunate job in that way. I think all of us would say that's the biggest benefit. We're all good buddies. Everyone is intelligent and interesting so we can talk about what's going on in the world as well. And Brett [Haylock], our chief, he's super cool with us. We're a small company. We don’t need to sign in or have evaluations, we take care of ourselves and our own show, and we all do a good show. We know how to figure out a new country in three days and how to change things and we know how to kill it for an audience, and that's the difference between artists of our calibre and what else is going on. I really enjoy my colleagues’ work; we're all really enthusiastic about our show. It's a good feeling.

Mooky Cornish will be appearing in La Soirée on London’s Southbank from 27 October - 17 January. For tickets click here.

Photos: Sean Dennie

Visit Mooky’s website

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