Spymonkey is an international comedy and physical theatre company, based in Brighton. Its members are Toby Park and Petra Massey, both British, Aitor Basauri, a Spaniard, and Stephan Kreiss (1962–2021), a German. According to the theatre director, Tom Morris, ‘Spymonkey follow a rich comic tradition which runs from Tommy Cooper through Morecambe and Wise to Reeves and Mortimer. They are clowns supreme, the high priests of foolery.'Quoted in Spymonkey's 2004 press brochure For Julian Crouch of Improbable Theatre, they are ‘groundbreaking and sharply brilliant, Spymonkey dance along the very boundary of artistic bravery. They take big risks in their work, and manage to be both true to a highly experimental process AND take their audience with them on that journey.'
Beginnings Park, Massey and Basauri met in 1997, when they were working with the Swiss action-theatre group Karl's Kühne Gassenschau in Zurich. The following year, in Brighton, they created their first show Stiff with Paul Weilenmann (their former boss at KKG), the director Cal McCrystal and the designer Lucy Bradridge. When Wielenmann left, Spymonkey advertised for a 'funny German' to replace him and, in 2000, found Stephan Kreiss. McCrystal later recalled, 'We made him do Hitler impressions to see if he had a sense of humour. And he did them really, really well.'Mary Brennan, 'Monkey Business', Herald Scotland, 8 August 2001
Park, Massey, Basauri, Kreiss and McCrystal all trained with the French master clown Philippe Gaulier. Spymonkey's first shows were co-created with McCrystal, who helped shape their stage personas. In a 2013 interview, Park said, "He really put the company together in terms of defining how the four of us work together on stage, the status relationships and comedic interplay between the four of us, what we would term our clowns....They are basically bits of the four of us which have been through the Cal McCrystallographier and exploded, warped and expanded into oversized cartoon-like dimensions. But they are all rooted in a bit of truth. I am and remain slightly pretentious and pompous in my artistic ambitions, but I look good in a suit. Stephan really doesn't give an arse whether he's pissing us off or not, he remains an anarchist, very unpredictable. Aitor would always like to be considered a great serious theatre actor rather than a very funny Spaniard, and will be very upset if you laugh at him when he is being serious."Diana Damian, Interview with Toby Park on the Run Riot website
Stiff Spymonkey's first play, Stiff, a comedy set in a funeral parlour, was first performed in 1998. Toby Park is Forbes Murdston, a pompous tragedian. After the death of his wife, Murdston has written a sentimental melodrama to express his grief, but he has made the mistake of hiring an enthusiastic, but incompetent, troupe of actors to perform in it. Stephan Kreiss is Mr Keller, the officious Teutonic embalmer, obsessed with organ donor cards. Aitor Basauri is Alfredo Graves, the overzealous Spanish pall-bearer. Petra Massey is Mandy Bandy, the dementedly romantic receptionist and make-up artiste. Murdston's attempts to stage his play are continually undermined by the three, and his frustration rises, to great comic effect, throughout the show.
In his Rose Bruford dissertation, Mathew Baynton looked at one scene in order to describe the 'multi-layered dynamic' of Spymonkey's work:
"Forbes has come to discuss the funeral arrangements for his late wife. Perhaps this is why Petra's clown, Amanda Bandy, has decided she can improve the show by playing a love scene – she thinks, "the audience don't want to be depressed by a scene about funeral arrangements, they want a classic love story!" or perhaps she is simply out to impress any agents in the audience, using each scene to show off another side of her versatile acting range....Forbes tries to cut in at first but soon loses his patience...and eventually resigns to her whim, taking the ring she thrusts at him and leaving. The whole scene had been a spontaneous choice for Mandy Bandy, and a complete surprise to Forbes. Here we have the multi-layered dynamic of a Spymonkey show – The actors are playing clowns who are playing characters."Matthew Baynton, 'A Critical Analysis of the work of Cal McCrystal with Spymonkey'
Reviewing the play in The Times in 2001, Donald Hutera wrote, 'The smartly silly inventions of a superbly skilful cast levitated me into a state of snickering convulsing and literally teary-eyed happiness.'Donald Hutera, 'Spymonkey',The Times, 30 January 2001
The set, props and costumes were designed by Lucy Bradridge, who has since worked on every Spymonkey production except A Christmas Carol in 2018.'About us', Spymonkey website
Cooped In 2001, Spymonkey and McCrystal created their second-show, Cooped. This is a Gothic Romance, inspired by McCrystal's childhood love of the American gothic soap, Dark Shadows. In Cooped, 'a young girl arrives at a remote railway station in the heart of darkest Northumberlandshirehampton to take up her position as confidential secretary to the reclusive Forbes Murdston. Beautiful, fawn-like, swinging, but a hostage to passion, Laura knows now that life – and love – will never be the same again...And her an orphan!'Synopsis of Cooped on Spymonkey's website The play is again supposedly written by the actor-manager Murdston (Park), who has once more miscast three unsuitable performers – the Spanish soap star Alfredo Gravés (Basauri), the German Expressionist Udo Keller (Kriess) and the pop diva Mandy Bandy (Massey).
Cooped opened with a sell-out run at the Edinburgh fringe festival, and received almost universal acclaim from the critics.Spymonkey Press Archive for Cooped Lucy Wray reviewed a performance at the Leicester Square Theatre when it was revived in 2013: 'Petra Massey's sassy Mandy Bandy downplays her role as ingénue Laura du Lay to begin with but she – and her ‘digestive problem’ – quickly become one of the main sources of humour. She continually demonstrates the delightful inability of her character to bend. Aitor Basauri plays narcissistic actor Alfredo Gravés, a man famous (in Spain and Paraguay) for playing the romantic lead in the high octane telenovela Hospital Tropical. When he is feeling particularly undervalued during the show, he brings on a television so the audience can admire an episode in which he seduces a nun. Stephen Kreiss plays the unpredictable German expressionist Udo Keller, who has an unconcealed hatred for Gravés. The sparring and spitting between the two is hilarious in its relentlessness.'Lucy Wray, 'Spymonkey's Cooped', Exeuntmagazine.com
Spymonkey in Las Vegas In 2003, Spymonkey received a major setback, when their next project, Bless, failed to get touring funding from Arts Council England, despite a Total Theatre Award, support by the British Council for international touring, and appearances at the London International Mime Festival for three successive years. Dorothy Max Prior, editor of Total Theatre magazine, commented, 'It seemed that physical comedy fell through a gap in the funder's book, being popular with audiences of all ages apparently making them entertainment rather than art – a plight that at the time also adversely affected many street arts and circus companies (who likewise used the undervalued skills of clowning, mime and physical comedy).'Dorothy Max Prior,'Monkey Business', Total Theatre, August 2006
At the same time, Spymonkey and Cal McCrystal accepted an offer from Cirque du Soleil to create and perform the comedy numbers for Zumanity – Another Side of Cirque du Soleil, an adult cabaret show they were creating in Las Vegas. Julian Crouch wrote, 'Our loss is Las Vegas's gain.'
Spymonkey spent two years performing Zumanity in a specially built theatre in the New York-New York Hotel and Casino, where they were seen by half a million people. Spymonkey also appear in Lovesick, Lewis Cohen's 2004 film documentary about the creation of the show.
While in Las Vegas, Spymonkey made a short film, No Exit (originally known as Love Room), directed by Cal McCrystal. It is a physical comedy about sexual obsession, in which the lust-driven Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kreiss and Petra Massey pursue each other, to the music of Henry Mancini, around a Las Vegas hotel bedroom. Park, as Forbes Murdston, introduces the film, explaining that he has been inspired by the nightmare vision of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit: 'For these three souls, there is literally No Exit!' The film can be seen on youtube.
Bless Spymonkey's third show, Bless, in 2007, completed the Forbes Murdston trilogy and was their last collaboration with McCrystal. Murdston is now an idealistic priest, hoping to rehabilitate a serial rapist (Massey), an arsonist (Kriess) and an embezzler (Basauri) through drama therapy. For the first time, they were joined by a fifth performer, the designer and puppeteer Graeme Gilmour, who played a prison guard. His role was to pacify the arsonist, Kreiss, by shouting the word 'Stuttgart!' at him.
Andrea Campbell reviewed the play in Canada's FFWD magazine: 'With Bless, a dastardly backdoor examination of the men and women we now venerate as saints, Spymonkey completes the trilogy of hilarity it began with Stiff and continued with Cooped...Massey's over-the-top delivery, from her Mother Teresa look-alike to her pole-dancing St Catherine, tempers Basauri's understated comic timing. Kreiss's recurring transformation from an excitable pyromaniac to a pre-conditioned whimpering idiot is both sympathetic and riotously funny. The highlight of the cast, however is Park, who plays his delightfully altruistic priest with equal measures of honesty and lucid sarcasm....Park's Mr Murdston is both identifiable for his naiveté and hilarious for his sincerity.'Andrea Campbell, 'Puppets Pyrotechnics and Religion', FFWD, 22 March 2007
Moby Dick For Moby Dick, in 2009, Spymonkey worked with two new directors, Jos Houben, a founder member of Théâtre de Complicité, and Rob Thirtle, who was assistant director and dramaturg. The set, a large-scale recreation of the deck of the Pequod, was created by Graeme Gilmour, while Lucy Bradridge provided costumes and props.
Tim Arthur reviewed a production at the Lyric Hammersmith for Time Out: 'Looser and more chaotic than its earlier work, the whole thing is played in the excitable hinterlands of delirium. Hysterically funny from start to finish, the show is presented as a new work by Compagnie Tony Parks, a pretentious ensemble of European non-actors. This play within a play sways and staggers from disaster to catastrophe as the four actors attempt to play all the members of the crew of Ahab's doomed whaling ship, Pequod. This loose interpretation of the time-honoured masterpiece is a masterclass in physical comedy, sublime lunacy and exquisitely silly wordplay. Aitor Basauri, Petra Massey, Toby Park and Stephan Kreiss are probably four of the greatest clowns currently working in British theatre. Singing mermaids, dancing sea anemones and a strangely moving, spectacular finale all combine to make a vaudevillian tour de force.'Tim Arthur, Spymonkey's Moby Dick, Time Out, 27 April 2010
Moby Dick included one of Spymonkey's most celebrated physical routines, in which Stephan Kreiss as Queequeg the harpooneer is repeatedly defeated by the steps on the deck of the Pequod. "They don't have stairs where he comes from..." can be seen on YouTube.
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