The Complete Deaths: Spymonkey

75 Deaths, a monumental number that perhaps only Spymonkey could tackle and succeed in doing so. Perhaps because this extraordinary troupe of clowns have a battery of ways of being both silly and poignant to hand – and they are neither afraid or shamed to employ them. So how do you make light of death? Or do you? Working with Tim Crouch they have created an exhaustingly funny way of depicting the most gruesome, the most moving and the most gratuitous. And whilst doing that they also portray their own dynamic, each of them taking a different line, Petra wants to “do” Ophelia, but Toby is taking an intellectual approach and says that as it is an off-stage death it does not count. Meanwhile in the wings Stefan declares his love for Petra, and on stage Aitor is conversing with the floating head of a rather dismissive Shakespeare, one who subscribes to a rather outdated style for the delivery of his words that includes, shouting, pointing and spitting. Littered with hysterically funny set pieces, the death scene from Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra and Lear, peppered with break-neck physical comedy and garnished with witty musicality, Spymonkey and Crouch have delivered a terrific show that had me crying with laughter and at the same time challenged by the subtle digging into the works of the bard. In the end employing bathos as three dismiss one, then bringing him back for a musical finale that had its roots in the classic musical clown format that circus lovers of a certain age will remember well. Oh yes, there’s a fly too, a motif that runs throughout to great comic effect! All in all a commemorative Shakespeare show that fearlessly debunks the bard and simultaneously lauds him too.
14 May
Theatre Royal Brighton
Andrew Kay
5 stars