Dear friends,

We are delighted to announce that The Complete Deaths will have its world premiere at Brighton Festival in May 2016, a co-production for the Festival’s 50th celebrations.

Our solemn, sombre and sublimely funny tribute to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death will be on tour from May to October 2016. Full UK tour details will be announced soon.

This will also be our fifth co-production with the great people at Royal & Derngate Northampton where we are looking forward to building and previewing the show before its Brighton opening.

A Spymonkey co-production with Brighton Festival and Royal & Derngate Northampton

All the onstage deaths in Shakespeare performed by “four of the greatest clowns working in Britain” (Time Out)

Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

Developed at The Other Place at the RSC, and supported by the MA Dramatic Writing Lab at Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martins.

There are 74 onstage deaths in the works of William Shakespeare – 75 if you count the black ill-favoured fly killed in Titus Andronicus.

They range from the Roman suicides in Julius Caesar to the death fall of Prince Arthur in King John; from the carnage at the end of Hamlet to snakes in a basket in Antony & Cleopatra; from Pyramus and Thisbe to young Macduff. There are countless stabbings, plenty of severed heads, some 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.

Spymonkey will perform them all – sometimes lingeringly, sometimes messily, sometimes movingly, sometimes musically, always hysterically. The four ‘seriously, outrageously, cleverly funny clowns’ (Time Magazine) will scale the peaks of sublime poetry, and plumb the depths of darkest depravity. It may even be the death of them.

Directed by Tim Crouch (I, Malvolio, An Oak Tree, Adler & Gibb) and designed by Spymonkey regular Lucy Bradridge, THE COMPLETE DEATHS will be a solemn, sombre and sublimely funny tribute to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

age suitability 14+

CREDITS
Performed by Spymonkey:
Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kreiss, Petra Massey & Toby Park
Adapted and Directed by Tim Crouch
Designed by Lucy Bradridge
Video Design by Sam Bailey
Lighting Design by Phil Supple
Original Music by Toby Park
Choreography by Theo Clinkard and Janine Fletcher
Assistant Director Lucy Skilbeck
Voice Coach Nia Lynn
Stage Manager Andy McCabe
Produced by Emily Coleman

PRESS REACTION

The Times last Thursday morning carried a full-page spread on The Complete Deaths, with interviews with director Tim Crouch, and comments from Michael Dobson from the Shakespeare Institute – Shakespeare’s bloodiest show: 74 characters die in one play

Spymonkey’s Toby Park was interviewed by Colin Paterson for BBC RADIO4 6 O’CLOCK NEWS for a segment: https://soundcloud.com/user745462493/bbc-radio4-03dec15-edit

UK press picked up on the story on their online editions:

THE TELEGRAPH: Shakespeare’s 74 Death Scenes in a Single Play More Gory Than Game of Thrones

THE DAILY MAIL: The bloodiest Shakespeare play ever: New production to feature all 74 of the Bard’s on-stage deaths in one show

….and the story picked up by various international news outlets including:

China Post: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/art/theater/2015/12/05/452643/British-play.htm
Sputnik Russia: http://sputnik.by/event/20151204/1018829505.html
El Comercio Ecuador: http://www.elcomercio.com/tendencias/shakespeare-teatro-muertes-obras-literatura.html

And finally this Telegraph comment piece is a hilarious example of the news cycle eating itself, a journalist getting irate about something that nobody has seen yet: “Shakespeare doesn’t deserve this monstering.”

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