(Clare Brennan’s article appeared in the Observer, 5/15.)
The Complete Deaths is a new show created by the clown-oriented company Spymonkey with director/adapter Tim Crouch. The conceit is simple: four clown characters have decided to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of the bard. Toby Park, the intellectual, is determined to shatter the complacency of the well-fed bourgeois audience by confronting us with our own mortality. His companions – Stephan Kreiss, Aitor Basauri and Petra Massey – reluctantly go along with him. There follow 75 deaths from Shakespeare’s 37 plays, which have been eviscerated for this production.