Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

Monk and Nina on the Fringe

You may be wondering why I've taken so long to report back on seeing Cousin Monk at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Well, it's been rather hard to gather together my responses, and Alice has also been reluctant to put fingers to keys. Let's explain.

Nina Conti

It all seemed to begin so well - we arrived in more than good time, and were first in the queue, so guaranteed a good seat. We waited. And waited. Then, in the middle of the waiting, Alice spotted Nina herself approaching. She whipped me out of her bag, and spoke the one word, "Nina". The lady turned towards us, so Alice held me up and said, My Monkey would like to say hello to you. To start with this was untrue, the person I wanted to say hello to was Monk. Secondly, as a friend gently pointed out, Nina might well have put down this grey-haired old lady clutching a small monkey as a totally unhinged individual (only half true) with whom any interaction was to be carefully avoided. [I'm eccentric, yes, but so is she! - Alice.]

[Reconstruction]

When we got in, several of the seats were already occupied, but we still got a place at one end of the fairly short front row. I was perched between Alice's feet in her attractive bag (she got it in Japan) where I could see and easily be seen. Monk was on first! He did his usual witty banter with the audience. One individual said she was an anthropologist. Monk replied, You know you're descended from me then, don't you! Or do you believe the other story?  Several audience members were interviewed, all in the front - but we weren't even acknowledged. Later, perhaps, I tried to console myself. But that later didn't come, and Monk never even appeared again! Even though I'm not capable of great emotional expression, I assure you I was very upset.

I'll let Alice finish this account. I've no more to say. So much for cousins.

Being continued . . . [12 August 2012] 

Nina Conti's Her Master's Voice & Dolly Mixtures - by Alice

I first encountered Nina Conti many years ago on a late-night TV stand-up show. This was when she worked solely with Monk. I thought their double-act was brilliant, unique, intelligent and totally hilarious. I went to see them perform live in a stuffy little venue on the Edinburgh Fringe, and they lived up to all expectations. As remarked on here before [Distant Cousins 6 July 2012] having my own penchant for philosophy, psychology and the absurd, I particularly appreciate how the two of them make use of the ventriloquist conventions yet simultaneously undermine and deconstruct them.

Anyone who saw the television broadcast of Her Master's Voice [BBC4 10 June 2012] will admire Nina Conti's emotional honesty about her personal life, and the story of her development as a talented artist. Her mentor, Ken Campbell, quoted Schiller on the Watcher at the gate of the mind, who blocks both insanity and creativity, as they are almost the same thing. Ken taught her that the ventriloquated doll is a device which allows us access to our insanity. Nina was his prodigy in ventriloquism and has been said to have reinvented the artform. She admitted that puppets may even surprise us by bringing out sides of our personality we didn't know we had.

I admit I sometimes feel like that with Monkey. . .

The film also revealed Nina's close and complex relationship with Monk. He can be a kindly companion, yet he can get away with murder too. As audience, we accept the illusion that Nina isn't really responsible for what he says. Don't we all have a rude, naughty little animal inside us? It's a profound shock, however, to have this made real when she lets him hypnotise her, disappear from sight, and then take her over completely.

Here I come. Here I come. Here I am! 

Oh, at last I'm in the stupid cow. And you're all a bit freaked out now, aren't you? 

Quite a sweet voice on a little monkey, but with breasts it's bloody sinister!

Recently Nina has added other characters to her entourage. Dolly Mixtures included her eight year old "daughter" - creatively inventive, juvenile and knowing; a Lothario of a handyman; a reformed Pit Bull Terrier; [more on those two below] a very elderly neighbour - touchingly sleepy, dementing and determined to stage-manage his own demise; and last, but certainly not least, her Scottish Granny - who sweetly conducted a brief audience review.

As Monkey said above, there was audience interaction. I began to feel suspicious about this with the anthropologist: I'd heard exactly the same joke from Monk on one of the many videos of Nina. [Search YouTube for starters.] How often do you get someone with the right occupation to prompt that one? And how come it was only those in the front row (who arrived before we did) who were asked to take part? 

Checking up later I found this review from 2010 which declares that my favourite comedienne uses stooges. A shame - she and Monk are smart enough to work extempore without them. The nature of the whole show changes too, when other people are used as dummies. Two were given half-masks, with mouths manipulated by Nina. One even stepped into a life-sized costume with a puppet-head. He co-operated by dancing with Nina, and then by "falling" down upon her and "doing press-ups" on request. The audience laughed, but I felt it verged on the abusive. What's more, she's much better than this, and doesn't need such tricks.

My favourite newcomer was Killer, the Pit Bull Terrier with a complex past history. He said he was now reformed and wore Claire's Accessories to prove the point, but in a rapid Jekyll and Hyde transformation reverted to an aggressive beast. Nina excells with this sort of mouthpiece. All the more shame that Monk, the true Jewel in her Crown, did not return to round off the show as he began it.

[That last link is totally irrelevant, but Monkey liked the colours so much, I've kept it to try and cheer him up.]

Dolly Mixtures was an apt title. As with the sweets, I preferred some to others.