The Complete Deaths will be a solemn, sombre and sublimely funny tribute to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. This new show performed by comedy theatre company Spymonkey is adapted and directed by Tim Crouch and will scale the peaks of sublime poetry, and plumb the depths of darkest depravity. It may even be the death of them. The Complete Deaths is part of Liverpool’s Physical Fest and is at the Playhouse Theatre on 20th and 21st May.

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 and 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.

Spymonkey is the U.K.’s leading physical comedy company, based in Brighton and comprising a core creative ensemble of five lead artists: artistic directors Toby Park, Petra Massey and Aitor Basauri, and associate artist Stephan Kreiss and designer Lucy Bradridge. They have been making sublimely hilarious and deeply ridiculous theatre since 1998 including their last critically acclaimed show Oedipussy, directed by Emma Rice, which visited Liverpool in 2012.

“Seeing how the four clowns each have a different approach to the material is interesting: it is reflective of the way that people have different connections to death and different approaches to Shakespeare.” -Erica Whyman, Deputy Artistic Director, Royal Shakespeare Company

The Complete Deaths is directed by Tim Crouch (I, Malvolio, Brighton Fringe; An Oak Tree, Soho Theatre; Adler & Gibb, Royal Court) and designed by Spymonkey regular Lucy Bradridge. Tim Crouch is an OBIE award-winning British playwright and theatre maker. He was an actor for many years before starting to write – and still performs in much of his work. He has written a series of five plays inspired by Shakespeare’s lesser characters – I, Shakespeare. I, Cinna (the poet) was commissioned and produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 2012 and was nominated for the Writers Guild of Great Britain’s award for Best Play for Younger Audiences.

Tickets for The Complete Deaths are priced at £9.50 to £22 and are available to purchase from the Box office on 0151 7094776 or online at www.everymanplayhouse.com.

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