by Spy Monkey (UK)
An 08 Harbourfront World Stage Presentation
at the Premiere Dance Theatre
March 5-14, 2008

    Bring back Spy Monkey for a longer run in Toronto than the mere ten-night run it was given at Harbourfront. The zany performing quartet (drawn from England, Spain, and Germany) has circus and comedy training, and for all I know also has dance training. Certainly, the four performers can match many a modern interpretive dancer when it comes to contortions, flexibility, agility, balance, and timing. They even get to do a bit of baroque parody in dance and song, and to perform cabaret disco as if preparing for a bargain basement Las Vegas. And when you take into account that their comedy is an eclectic mixture of Monty Python, Mel Brooks, and Marx Brothers, the results are deliriously funny.

   Their show is a parody of the Gothic romance novel, done as farce, replete with a dark and stormy night, a groaning door, mullioned window through which a screaming woman can be seen, et cetera. Of course, the Gothic frame is a loose structure, indeed, because plot or situation is a motive for wild flights of comedy. So, when blonde, perky Petra Massey as Mandy Bandy (in Swinging Sixties mini-skirt and calf-length white boots) arrives at an eerie, secluded country manor in Birch End owned by pretentious and violently schizoid writer Forbes Murdstone (Toby Park), things go quickly awry. Forbes has a loony butler Udo (Stephan Kreiss), who could have stepped right out of a chilling German expressionist movie or, at the very least, a Mel Brooks’ Gothic parody. Forbes also has a Spanish soap star, Alfredo Graves (Aitor Basauri), who cannot, it seems, go anywhere without a portable television to show scenes from his popular series, Hospital Tropical, and the award he has won for it. All four characters are to enact the roles of figures conjured up by the pulp author, and the insanity is multiplied with incredible speed.

   Parody runs rampant—from groaning Gothic to Asian martial arts, from English sex farce to ballet and interpretive dance, from the detective story to melodramatic romance. One dream sequence of “slow-mo” dueling Asian combatants seems loosely inspired by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Another, with three Talmudic men comparing their physical endowments (in faux Hebrew) by holes in bed sheets is slapstick sketch comedy out of vaudeville. Nothing is ever too low, too raunchy, or too broad to be disallowed. As Laura du Lay, heroine of Murdstone’s fiction, Ms. Massey has to enact a gastric attack that is pure laughing gas for an audience. Later, she even feigns an orgasm by popping ping-pong balls out of a concealed orifice. And when she turns up totally nude for a period song-and-dance parody, she prances around in the company of men who are also nude, save for fig leaves that don’t seem to care a fig for what they accidentally reveal. 

   The performers are fully in the antic mode. As the psychotic romantic lead, Toby Parks is a handsome straight man but he also has a gift for caricature and physical comedy. Ms Massey shows off her clowning skills, mixing feminine pulchritude and naughtiness with amazing physical flexibility. Stephan Kreiss is a comic sadist as the butler, and what he does with a liquor cart or a very gummy, elastic tongue must be seen rather than described. Last but certainly not least, Aitor Basauri as the Spaniard is a crazy mixture of Peter Sellers and John Cleese. He can morph from silly identity to identity with the drop of a hairpiece or the shift of a clumsily funny accent, and when he pretends to be a Catholic bishop, he does a bit of comic business with his sacred ring that breaks up everyone, including his acting partner on stage.

   Cooped will tickle many a funny bone with its comic mayhem, and it deserves a longer return-visit to Toronto.

photo: Sean Dennie

(L-R); Stephen Kreiss, Aitor Basauri, Petra Massey, Toby Park (seated)

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