CLOWNING troupe Spymonkey mark the 400th centenary of the Bard's death by presenting plenty more permanent exits stage left in The Complete Deaths of Shakespeare.

Strictly that should read The Incomplete Deaths, as the body count doesn't include those who spin off this mortal coil either off stage or merely mentioned in desptaches.

So, out go Hamlet's Ophelia (despite the protestations of company member and joint artistic director Petra Massey); Mercutio, for whom "tis but a scratch" on stage but a fatal one once off it, and Antigonus, of "Exit, pursued by a bear" fame in The Winter's Tale.

Instead, director Tim Crouch has focused on the death toll that happens on the boards, from the fast-forgotten, "he's history" likes of Matthew Gough in Henry V1 Part 2; to Enorbarbus just sitting in a ditch to die from grief in Antony & Cleopatra; and the "black ill-favour'd fly" killed in Titus Andronicus that takes the total to 75.

A woman sits knitting, silent and stone-faced, as she counts down the deaths on an electronic scoreboard, in an echo of those morbid French women at the feet of the guillotine.

Never once does she look at the manic mayhem going on around her, wherein the mischievous Massey, melancholic Spanish co-artistic director Aitur Basauri, supercilious red-carpet revolutionary Englishman Toby Park and oversized loon Stephan Kreiss re-enact each stabbing, severed head, poisoning, mobbing and smothering.

A video screen is a regular companion for imagery of flies, live camera work and a cartoon head of a disapproving Shakespeare as the chameleon performers  bounce like dodgem cars from one theatre style to another, never predictable as to which direction they will take, be it circus, cabaret or New Orleans funeral band.

From a ridiculous pink codpiece for Romeo, to a serious death scene for Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, to Yazoo's Only You being bashed out percussively on cardboard tubing on each other's backs, they can be silly, surreal, sombre, savvy, savage and sad too. This union of four of Shakespeare's Fools and Monty Python makes for the good, the Bard and the ugly.

The Complete Deaths, Spymonkey, Hull Truck Theatre, tonight at 7.30pm, tomorrow, 2pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk