This Aristophanes comedy is theatre’s oldest, we are told, but can it still be funny? That is one question – and there are so many others thrown into this picaresque journey into the underworld that you get lost in the darkness.
In ancient Athens, Dionysus (Toby Park) and the enslaved Xanthius (Aitor Basauri) venture into hades in search of the city’s great, recently departed tragedian Euripides. This version, by physical theatre company Spymonkey and Carl Grose, takes huge meta-theatrical detours to become a strange creation, as motley as the underworld monsters they meet on their way.
There are inquiries into the nature of comedy, a plotline involving a Hollywood producer, randomly attached scenes (including from A Streetcar Named Desire) and the story of the theatre company itself, which has come to be seen as the closest thing to Monty Python in the 21st century and which once comprised four core performers.
Now there are only two – Stephan Kreiss died in 2021 and Petra Massey departed for Las Vegas. Park and Basauri are explicitly in mourning. Their characters keep to the original mission to bring back Euripides but it diverts into a search for Kreiss.
Sadness leaks in, and a questioning of whether Spymonkey can continue to exist in this reduced, grieving form. There are songs about creative uncertainty and writer’s block, and it all begins to sound like emo angst. Tragedy and comedy can be twinned to powerful effect, but in this baggy jumble the former is heartfelt and the latter half-hearted. “We thought we could make this 3,000-year-old play funny but we can’t,” says Dionysus. It does makes you smile at least.
Jacoba Williams plays Heracles, as well as various others, and has a natural and magnetic comic confidence. Xanthius is more the fool than in Aristophanes’s original, with his donkey laugh and “arse” jokes. Figures in luminous cagoules and sandals (played by a community cast) form the frog chorus, and a revolving circular dais on Lucy Bradridge’s set provides physical comedy.
In The Frogs, Aristophanes warned against cleaving to the past. Spymonkey are clearly processing their own. They might be reduced, but hopefully they will come back stronger in time.
• At the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, until 3 February, and at the Kiln theatre, London, 8 February-2 March.
