Theatre review: The Complete Deaths

Just in case you haven't been paying attention - not just to this blog but to anything even remotely theatre-related - 2016 marks 400 years since the death of Shakespeare, and many companies (not the National) have been marking the occasion. They've mostly been doing this by staging his plays, which to be honest they do all the time anyway so it's not been altogether noticeable. Physical comedy troupe Spymonkey, though, have come up with a more fitting tribute to a morbid occasion with The Complete Deaths, which runs through the 65 deaths Shakespeare wrote (there's more than that in the canon, but for the purposes of this show only onstage deaths count) in a single evening. The framework is the classic comedy device of a company not quite on the same page, as Toby Park opens the show by announcing that after 18 years of silliness Spymonkey really need to go in a new, more serious direction and use these fictional deaths to explore dark realities.

Theatre review: Measure for Measure (Shakespeare's Globe)

Of the three major productions of Measure for Measure in London this year, Shakespeare's Globe was always going to offer the least high-concept approach. I'm not sure I expected its opening to be quite so literal though: About 10 minutes before it starts, the Globe fills with actors, running around the groundlings and climbing up ladders to the higher galleries. Some offer the services of whores, others are preaching against all the debauchery around them. Meanwhile Dominic Rowan sits quietly onstage with his back to both the sexual freedoms enjoyed in Vienna, and to those offended by them. Because Rowan is the Duke, literally turning his back on behaviour that, in theory, carries the harshest penalties in his state. But he's let these laws lapse for decades, and doesn't know how to enforce them again. So instead he's going to take a leave of absence, leaving the city in the hands of the severe Angelo (Kurt Egyiawan,) who he thinks will bring back the morality laws.

Theatre review: Never Try This At Home

When a show's publicity tells you that people sitting in the front row will be given a plastic mac to wear over their clothes, it's a safe bet that the front row's a place to be avoided. Of course, it's just as safe a bet that people like me and Phill will head straight for it, and that's what I recommend you do as well if you go see Told By An Idiot's Never Try This At Home. The silliest show I've seen for a long time but with a surprisingly serious core, it's a take-down of 1970s and '80s Saturday morning children's TV with a lot to say about the attitudes of the time as well. With all the characters sharing their actors' names there's a feeling that the scripted parts of the show are complemented by a fair bit of genuine improvisation - especially as it's fronted by Whose Line Is It Anyway? stalwart Niall Ashdown as a present-day TV presenter.

Theatre review: Oedipussy

The word "silly" could serve as the full review of Spymonkey's Oedipussy, which opens with the cast of four lamenting a negative review of their previous show. Having been criticised for being too frivolous for their age (the cast are in their forties and fifties) they announce they'll be taking on the much more serious topic of classical Greek tragedy. But Sophocles probably didn't have this in mind as the company's take on the Oedipus myth is frantic, ridiculous, and very funny. Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kreiss, Petra Massey and Toby Park, a multinational cast with seemingly no embarrassment threshold, spend the next couple of hours strutting around in nappies, taking on all the characters and coming up with endless physical comedy and creative use of props.