“Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder Ambassadors WC2” | theatreCat (L. Purves, Jul 2024)
“Hurrah for Jon Brittain, Matthew Floyd Jones and Fabian Aloise, and their joyful invention of Kathy and Stella… something good is happening when a young group, outside the established and celebrated mainstream, get together and make a show on the fringes, daring to be different, facing the perils of launching it down the slipway to fill the stalls with surprised glee. Especially when the product is fresh but also disciplined, worked-up with a meticulous affection.”
“Why 2022's hit musical Kathy and Stella is having a second stab at EdFringe” | The Stage (N. Tripney, Jul 2023)
“One of the big success stories at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a bona fide hit during a tricky year when the fringe was still in recovery mode… Kathy and Stella was a big, warm-hearted show at a time when people needed just that.”
“Writers celebrate second Musical Theatre Review Award” | Musical Theatre Review (Aug 2022)
“Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder at Roundabout @ Summerhall has won Musical Theatre Review’s Best Musical Award… a fast-moving comedy not only packed with super songs but fabulously underscored too… The style, speed and overall playfulness is irresistible.”
“Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder” | The i (G. Smith, Aug 2022)
“A night of pure joy… Floyd Jones and Brittain’s lyrics are brilliantly witty, containing jokes about everything from police corruption to the Pennines. And the whole thing has a fizzing, joyous energy about it, helped a huge amount by Floyd Jones providing live, thrillingly accomplished keyboard accompaniment on stage.”
“Miss Nightingale at London Hippodrome” | Exeunt (F. Peschier, Mar 2018)
“Floyd Jones is sodding marvellous: his George is wounded and vulnerable, spiky and resilient. He exudes the wild abandon of sexual liberation of Berlin in ‘Meine Liebe Berlin’, channelling his inner Liza Minnelli straddling a straight-back chair. In less capable hands, it could have been a weak impression of the original but Floyd Jones makes it inarguably his.”
“Richard Carpenter is Close to You at Underbelly George Square” | The Times (A. Radcliffe, Aug 2017)
“As might be expected from the keyboard-playing half of the acclaimed musical comedy act Frisky & Mannish, Floyd Jones’s compositions are delightfully on the money, capturing the smooth production and honey harmonies of the brother-sister duo, wriggling out of copyright infringement through clever key changes and lyrical sleight of hand… The show’s stroke of genius lies in the characterisation of Carpenter as a nervy, frustrated has-been, who has never made it out from behind the shadow of his much-loved late sister but who still harbours artistic ambitions of his own… Elements of this portrayal are unflattering, but Floyd Jones, who nails Richard’s lisping soft-spoken voice and slightly manic smile, also invests the great man with a certain little-boy-lost appeal. The premise may sound slightly cruel in outline but it comes off because it has the ring of hard truth.”
“Second round of Scotsman's Fringe First theatre awards presented” | The Scotsman (Aug 2017)
“Depression doesn’t have to be awkward for the stage, as A Super Happy Story (About Being Super Sad) goes to show… a real hit with a topic that has touched each person standing in the long queues waiting to get in to the venue before every show... What A Super Happy Story captures quite brilliantly is the way depression strikes regardless of how happy the circumstances… Lest any of this get too maudlin, there’s an excellent set of cabaret songs by Matthew Floyd Jones.”
“What are the best shows of the Edinburgh Fringe 2017?” | The Stage (P. Vale, Aug 2017)
“It’s always interesting to see something that’s just a little bit left-of-centre. Matthew Floyd Jones… has taken the life and career of Richard Carpenter, brother to the late and better known Karen, and re-imagined it as a piece of ‘morality cabaret’. The pastiche musical numbers are meticulously constructed, as you might expect from the talented writer/musician, but the bittersweet comedy narrative is priceless.”
A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) (Pleasance Courtyard) | What’s On Stage (B. Hewis, Aug 2017)
“Where Brittain (Rotterdam) and Floyd Jones's (Frisky & Mannish) enrapturing musical comes into its own is in the clever handling of its sensitive subject… live underscoring from Floyd Jones creates an atmosphere that is by turns exhilarating and exhausting. This is a must see for anyone that has felt the effects of depression.”
“The Not Television Edinburgh Awards 2017” | Not Television (B. Walters, Aug 2017)
“It’s testament to Matthew Floyd Jones’s talent that the night I saw Richard Carpenter is Close to You many things apparently went wrong but you genuinely couldn’t tell. It probably helped that it’s a show about unmet expectations... It combines the expert pop pastiche that MFJ and Laura Corcoran delivered as Frisky & Mannish with the more uncanny and unnerving neurotic introspection that has marked Floyd Jones’s recent solo projects. The result is powerful, entertaining and empowering, and bloody funny.”
“Forget the Funky Gibbon: how musical comedy went from square to hip” | The Guardian (B. Logan, Oct 2015)
“[Musical comedy]’s not a novelty anymore, it’s an art form, a calling even, with its own superstars – Tim Minchin, Bo Burnham, Flight of the Conchords – and sassy newer acts (Frisky and Mannish, say) with countercultural cachet.”
“Frisky & Mannish: taking the beep out of the Pussycat Dolls” | The Guardian (Aug 2014)
“Our style of comedy is way older than us. John Gay was doing it in The Beggar’s Opera (1728) when he lampooned popular tunes of the day for a dribbling mass of unwashed peasants (to make no inference about our own lovely audiences...) We’re not looking to reinvent the wheel here. We just try to make a really good wheel.”
“Combing the Adelaide festival Fringe” | The Guardian (A. Needham, Mar 2013)
“The most visible [manifestation] is the Garden of Unearthly Delights, a bustling park full of venues packed out after dark, boasting gigs by big-name comedians from Aussies like Wil Anderson and Peter Helliar, to Brits like Frisky and Mannish. (Ross Noble, Sarah Millican and Stephen K Amos are also in town).”
“What cabaret can teach traditional theatre” | The Guardian (L. Gardner, Oct 2012)
“Led by Frisky and Mannish and a glorious array of disreputable types, the cabaret world's hugely entertaining video riposte to Gary Barlow and other X Factor judges who use the word "cabaret" as a term of abuse seems to be becoming a YouTube hit… Cabaret is not for the has-beens but for those forging the future. No wonder it's attracting some of our brightest, most entrepreneurial and most talented producers and performers.”
“Cabaret stars make a song and dance about Gary Barlow's X Factor jibes" | The Guardian (B. Walters, Oct 2012)
“This "cabariot" is the brainchild of satirical pop mashup duo Frisky and Mannish, aka Laura Corcoran and Matthew Floyd Jones, who have attracted a sizeable following with their witty riffs on contemporary pop… To his great credit, Gary Barlow tweeted the link to his 2.2 million Twitter followers, calling it "amazing". By midnight, views had passed 15,000. By this morning, the figure was over 23,000.”
“Frisky and Mannish interview” | The List’s Edinburgh Festival Guide (J. Richardson, Aug 2011)
“No longer punchy Oxford University upstarts, [Frisky & Mannish] are now in the comedy big leagues, thanks in part to regular Radio 1 appearances on Scott Mills' show, and a well-viewed collection of YouTube videos… 'Conceived in a bedroom' three years ago, the pair have already graced such grand venues as Sydney Opera House. So it seems equally conceivable that they might some day eclipse the pop stars they're parodying.”
“Frisky & Mannish: It’s harder making pop music funnier than it already is” | The Observer (T. Lamont, Jul 2011)
“Frisky and Mannish (the stage names plucked from Byron) take apart and reassemble pop songs. Quite expertly… Their act has been the toast of the Edinburgh festival fringe for the past two years… In 2009, their hit fringe show got an unexpected thumbs-up from the mocked Kate Nash, who turned up as a spectator.”
“Snap, cackle and pop” | Fest Magazine (M. Trueman, Jul 2011)
“A Frisky and Mannish show is, first and foremost, a celebration… They’re the mad scientists of pop, mixing unlikely solutions from incompatible artists and distilling entire genres into their separate elements… What sets Frisky and Mannish apart, however, is the range of their references. Not content with inserting a few knob gags into 'Single Ladies', they manage to be both complex and comprehensive.”
“Where are comedy’s male-female double acts?” | The Guardian (B. Logan, Apr 2011)
“What's distinctive about Frisky and Mannish, who start touring this week? No, I don't mean the kohl-eyes and fishnets. Nor do I mean their discovery of Noel Coward overtones in the oeuvre of Lily Allen, much as I like the music they make to prove the point. What's unusual about F&M… is that they're a male-female live comedy double act… From Flight of the Conchords to French and Saunders, single-sex double acts are everywhere – but Frisky and Mannish show that more should cross the gender divide.”
“Edinburgh Festival Guide’s Top-rated Shows 2010” | The List (2011)
“Daniel Kitson had the best-reviewed show of last year’s Edinburgh Fringe… topping a chart compiled by The List magazine. Second came Frisky & Mannish’s The College Years, with four 5-star reviews, with Bo Burnham third – a three-star review from Hairline dragging his average down a shade below the musical duo. The next best-reviewed comedy shows were, in order, Russell Kane, Kevin Eldon, Adam Hills, Greg Davies, New Art Club, Tommy Tiernan and a tie between Bridget Christie and Carl Donnelly.”
“The best laughs of 2010: From Bo Burnham to Frisky and Mannish, an exciting new generation made itself heard” | The Telegraph (D. Cavendish, Dec 2010)
“[Frisky & Mannish] continued to serve up idiosyncratic mash-ups of pop numbers famous, forgotten and downright foolish. Arch and artful, flamboyant and funny, their comedy-cabaret fusion brightened the year.”
“Fringe faces brain storm as Oxbridge performers thunder in” | The Times (Aug 2010)
“Jones is one half of Frisky and Mannish, an act on the brink of becoming The Next Big Thing. Both he and Laura Corcoran, his stage partner, recently graduated from the Oxford Revue to launch their cabaret, which had its debut on the Fringe last year. It was a global phenomenon.”
“Edinburgh Festival 2010: Frisky and Mannish interview” | The Telegraph (D. Cavendish, Aug 2010)
“The moment I first got sold on Frisky and Mannish came during their riotous debut Edinburgh show last year, when they brought together on stage Lily Allen and Noel Coward… You could say the head-on impact of Noel meeting Lily was like the showbiz equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider. It felt as if it had not only the capacity to cause uncontrollable ripples of laughter but also to rip apart the fabric of pop itself.”
“Talent 2010: The comedians, Frisky & Mannish” | The Independent (A. Jones, Dec 2009)
“Meet Frisky and Mannish… Together they form a comedy cabaret duo so deliriously entertaining, one hard-bitten critic was moved to declare: ‘If you don't enjoy this, you have no soul.’ The show which drew this breathless praise, alongside a cluster of five-star reviews at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, was School of Pop, a glorious hour which saw the pair sing and play their way through ‘twisted’ musical parodies.”
“Frisky and Mannish’s School of Pop” | Chortle (S. Bennett, Aug 2009)
“The Fringe still has the capacity to surprise… Based on nothing more than personal prejudice, I’d dismissed Frisky and Mannish as the sort of all glitter and no soul camp cabaret act that really wouldn’t be my cup of Darjeeling. How wrong I was: this is pure exhilarating brilliance from start to finish… It’s essentially ‘one song to the tune of another’ for 60 minutes. But the artfulness and attitude with which they do it is irresistibly impressive, double-handedly reviving the often moribund genre of musical parody and providing an upliftingly fun night out… A simple catalogue of what they do cannot however, do justice to the brilliant juxtapositions, which are elevated way above the gimmick. Instead they are given devious, often misdirecting, set-ups – so the laugh of recognition when the audience figures out exactly what’s going on is heightened – and expertly executed. The pace is invigorating, too. No spoof outstays its welcome, and songs twist and turn in unexpected directions to maintain the freshness… All this is topped off by the larger-than-life performances of these hugely charismatic duo, which sweep you up into their outrageous world… Never sounding a duff note, this is an utter blast from start to all-too-soon finish.”