The Complete Deaths will premiere at Brighton Festival on 11th May and tour until October, and will be a humorous take on all deaths featured in William Shakespeare’s plays.
Altogether, there are 74 onstage deaths in the poet’s works – 75 including the black ill-flavoured fly killed in Titus Andronicus.
The deaths range from the Roman suicides in Julius Caesar and the death fall of Prince Arthur in King John, to the snakes in a basket in Anthony & Cleopatra that killed Cleopatra and Charmian and all the carnage at the end of Hamlet that saw off Laertes, Claudius, Gertude and Hamlet. There’s also the demise of Enorbarbus, who simply sits in a ditch and just dies from grief.
There are also countless stabbings, plenty of severed heads, some poisonings, two mobbing’s and a smothering.
Each and every death will be performed by the four clowns that make up Spymonkey, with The Complete Deaths being the company’s fifth co-production with the Royal and Derngate Northampton.
The show will premiere at Brighton Festival in May as a co-production for the festival’s 50th birthday celebrations, and will also be a tribute to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
The Complete Deaths will then go on a major UK tour from May to October, with dates to be announced soon.
Spymonkey are based in Brighton and have been making theatre since 1998. They have collaborated with Cirque Du Soleil and Sacha Baron Cohen in the past.
Between 2013 and 2015, they created the comedy content for Cirque Du Soleil’s Zumanity in Las Vegas and were physical comedy consultants for Cohen’s feature film Grimsby.
For more information visit www.spymonkey.co.uk.
