SpyMonkey & Tim Crouch
Brighton Festival
May 13th
Theatre Royal
Performed by Spymonkey: Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kreiss, Petra Massey & Toby Park
Directed by Tim Crouch
Well, what’s not to like about all of Shakespeare deaths rolling out in front of you for an evening’s entertainment. Certainly when it’s done with such aplomb and style as the Spymonkey crew have. All of the Bard’s 74 scripted deaths in one show but in a myriad of styles which just adds to the pure electric delight of this wonderfully talented group of performers and the tight watchful eye of director Tim Crouch, it’s a pairing which takes all their talents and kicks it up into the high stratosphere of utter daftness. This was quality clowning done with serious love for the subject matter and I was horrified as much as I laughed. Spymonkey make us focus on the actions more than the effect of the violence and this brings home the awful imagination of Mr Shakespeare and his infinitely unpleasant mind.
See full details for this show here
From the Roman suicides in Julius Caesar to the carnage at the end of Hamlet. From snakes in a basket in Antony & Cleopatra to young Macduff. There were countless stabbings, severed heads, poisonings, two mobbings and a smothering. Enorbarbus just sits in a ditch and dies from grief. And then there’s the pie that Titus serves the Queen of the Goths.
It felt close to a Tudor night out too, grand old space, deadly seriously comedy, loads of blood, endless smutt and silly sexual stuff, farts and gurglings of every type and a baying, up for it crowd. Spymonkey are a superb group of performers and this show was a delight from it’s first to last gasping, broken breath.
This is a solemn, sombre and sublimely funny tribute to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, who – so it’s said- died himself of the ill affects of a hangover. One never imagined the Bard to be such a lightweight.
More on Spymonkey on their website:
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