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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'[4] 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.
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.
'[7] 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).
[8] 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.
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.
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.
Singing mermaids, dancing sea anemones and a strangely moving, spectacular finale all combine to make a vaudevillian tour de force.
'[12] 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.
According to Dominic Maxwell in The Times, "There's some nice new material here, with their New Age talk, coy high fives – 'mid-fives', if you will – and the sort of audience participation that loosens you up rather than freezes you up.
Rice has described the genesis of the show on the Rose Theatre blog: 'I knew that I wanted to find a robust narrative spine to hang Spymonkey's phenomenal creativity, anarchy and irreverence from.
'[14] The combination of Bond, Barbarella and Greek tragedy inspired Lucy Bradridge to create 'absolutely breathtaking costumes which manage to maintain a realism of the era in the form of togas, chitons & armour; in contrast with the futuristic leotards, shoulder pads and platform shoes, bodysuits, shepherds cloaks and woollen pants with critter like sheep balls, Egyptian beards, hats and tunics, as well as the majestic and refined clothes of the Theben and Corinthian kings and queens.
'[15] The play was reviewed by Libby Purves in The Times, 'Stephan Kreiss the German is a manic Oedipus while Park, Petra Massey and the Spaniard, Aitor Basauri, dart through the other parts, making the most of the pillared set's narrow entrances to get props and headdresses stuck....Below the fluff of hilarity, the tragic core is never obliterated....When Oedipus's blinded eyes fall in long red ribbons, the coda 'The gods will have their way' is delivered flat, unexpectedly powerful....Some people will never 'get' Spymonkey.
The show was reviewed by David Upton in the British Theatre Guide: 'Using back-projected imagery they descend into a mummy's vault, not forgetting to include a sand dance sequence; bloodily impale themselves, or sever limbs—with audience participation naturally—and wind it all up with an even more horrific Abigail's Party piece than the original play.
Fleapit is set in a failing art-house cinema, La Scala, managed by pretentious film buff Kenneth Forbes (Toby Park), aided by Lorenzo (Aitor Basauri) who runs an unusual kiosk, and Otto (Stephan Kreiss), the naked machete-wielding projectionist.
Attempts at serious artistry — a Pina Bausch-style Macbeth, Aitor Basauri's "proper" Shakespearean acting, Toby Park's stern pronouncements about the artist as "agitator" — are all undercut by the inescapable power of the ridiculous.
To avoid causing offence, Laura du Lay's dream sequences, involving Hassidic Jews and Chinese martial arts fighters, were replaced with quarrelling monks and two scenes recycled from Bless.
Petra Massey then returned to Las Vegas to play Boozy Skunkton, host of Spiegelworld's Atomic Saloon Show, directed by Cal McCrystal.
'[25] The loss of Kreiss, and long-term absence in Las Vegas of Massey, led Park and Basauri to shift their creative focus from performing to directing.
The cast comprised Jasmine Chiu, Katie Grace, Matthew Faucher and John-Luke Roberts, playing brightly coloured bickering hair follicles (Hairnry, Hairmione, Hairriet and Al).
[27] According to the Wiener Zeitung, the piece was "a triumph of comedy" in which Offenbach appears as a character "who, in his vain search for his statue, staggers through the action and gets on everyone's nerves – except the audience, who are thrilled by Marcel Mohab's comedic performance.
Once a troupe of four core members, Petra Massey ‘went off to Las Vegas’ and Stephan Kreiss died in 2021, leaving just Park and Basauri to figure out what the company is in its current form.
"[30] Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph praised the rapport of Park and Basauri, "the former combining neurosis and bombast, the latter a master of deadpan, effete daintiness and flaunted hirsuteness.
Such work includes Miss Behave's Variety Nighty (2008) a variety cabaret show at the Roundhouse Camden; Palazzo (2008-9) a spiegeltent gastronomical cabaret in Amsterdam; Sandi Toksvig's Christmas Cracker (2010) at the Royal Festival Hall; Jekyll&Hyde(ish) a co-production with Lyric Hammersmith and Peepolykus, directed by Sean Holmes and written by Joel Horwood for Latitude Festival in 2011; Every Last Trick (2014) by Georges Feydeau (adapted by Tamsin Oglesby) a collaboration with Paul Hunter for Royal & Derngate Northampton; and Mrs Hudson's Christmas Corker (2014) at Wilton's Music Hall London, directed by Ed Gaughan.
While touring the world with Spymonkey, Basauri, sometimes with Petra Massey, runs clown workshops, described on the company website: "You will learn how to begin to trust your instinctive and spontaneous self.
"[34] Basauri writes, "The performer who dares to stand before a crowd, unafraid to make mistakes and find pleasure in being wonderfully silly will reap fruitful rewards.