Spymonkey makes Liverpool return

The latest offering from theatre troupe Spymonkey makes a visit to the Liverpool Playhouse this month.

The four-piece arrive with their critically acclaimed mis-telling of the classic Herman Melville novel Moby Dick, which marks the first time the award-winning company has visited the Playhouse, and they will be joined by Merseyside-based choir The Capriccio Singers.

The actors find themselves trapped inside the belly of a literary monster. As they contemplate their fate they recount the story of Moby Dick, updating the novel’s epic examination of good, evil, fate and obsession with more profound considerations, such as whether a mermaid figurehead can get pregnant or what a cannibal harpoonist from Bavaria eats.

Moby Dick is the latest of four internationally acclaimed and award-winning productions from Spymonkey, which have garnered undiluted comparisons with the likes of Monty Python, the Marx Brothers, The Goons and the Carry On films.

Spymonkey is an international team, comprising of founder members Aitor Basauri, Petra Massey and Toby Park – who met whilst working with Swiss action-theatre company Karl’s Kuhne Gassenschau – and Stephan Kreiss. The group have already performed at Liverpool’s Cathedral and World Museum.

Meanwhile, the National Theatre arrives at the Liverpool Playhouse with a Tara Arts co-production of Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album from Tuesday 27 to Saturday 31 October. Issues of fundamentalism battling with liberalism are brought to life in Kureishi’s stage adaptation of his best-selling acclaimed novel.

Spymonkey’s Moby Dick appears at the Liverpool Playhouse from Tuesday 20 to Saturday 24 October. To read the Whatsonstage.com review of the show, click here