“A deliciously demented Gothic thriller” is what Spymonkey’s “Cooped” is advertised as and by George, they deliver!
From what I could gather, the basic story was based around the arrival of Laura Goulett to an English Manor to work as a Secretary for George Merston. Klaus the extremely weird butler was also working there. Doctor Roger Parchment would often come by to rescue Laura from the strange happenings at the house. Add a murder, a love triangle and mistaken identity and you have all the ingredients for a thriller. Although, after the wild ride that Spymonkey takes you on, you won’t care that “the plot” itself is paper thin and all over the shop.
Spymonkey are renowned for their physical humour as well as surrealism and “Cooped” provides the perfect platform for these. Petra Massey was thrown about the stage on a regular basis and there were prat falls aplenty. There were some strange and seemingly out of place dream sequences, Klaus’ over the top behavour and plenty of ducks. The cast even broke into song on several occasions with synchronised dancing.
The laws of common decency were never going to get in Spymonkey’s way. A sequence involving ping pong balls, larger than life racial stereotypes, fig leaves that leave nothing to the imagination and an extended fart gag were proof of this. As a connoisseur of wrong material, I wholeheartedly approve.
The set was fantastic, looking like an old manor. It was modified later through some simple props to move the action to a room upstairs. Liberal use of a smoke machine and lighting effects helped to create the spooky mood. There was a clever use of video by way of a small monitor brought onto the stage by “The Spanish Actor” would was plugging his Spanish soap opera.
In a novel twist, each of Spymonkey’s cast played an eccentric “Actor” (from the “Cooped Theatre Company”) who rivaled their “character” in the lunacy stakes. This allowed them to break down the fourth wall of the theatre almost by proxy. There was hammy overacting throughout , many asides to the audience and obviously fake props that the “actors” gave up pretending were working. There were even a couple of moments where a character would seem to ad lib a line or action that surprised a fellow actor. You were never able to determine whether this was something spontaneous or cleverly scripted.
As an audience member, Cooped works best if you don’t try and read too much into it and enjoy the ride. For booking details go to Spymonkey’s Cooped