The Complete Deaths is an evening in the theatre which works really hard to have something for everyone in the audience, and mostly succeeds. Adapted by writer/performer Tim Crouch and developed into a full blown assault on our senses by physical comedy ensemble Spymonkey, all 75 onstage deaths from the complete works of Shakespeare are performed in a wide variety of theatrical styles; some gone in a blink of an eye (the C list of little known nobles and hapless 'wrong place, wrong time' minor characters) and others, the blockbusters, given more time but not necessarily more gravitas. A giant sausage-making machine dispatches Titus Andronicus' family and foes alike while Cleopatra and the Asps perform a number worthy of Vegas. Surtitles help us identify play and character and an electronic onstage counter keeps track, the tension mounting as we approach zero. Who will get the number 1 spot? No spoilers, but not all of the deceased are human.

The stage set (designer Lucy Bradridge) looks like the cellar of a giant serial killer, lined with plastic and bright fluorescent lighting, giving a big clue for what is to come. Shakespeare's onstage deaths are vivid and vicious and occasionally playfully inventive verging on the silly and Spymonkey do their best to reflect this.

Toby (Toby Park) argues for a serious exploration of meaning, an opportunity to use the excellence of the bard to view the wrongs of modern society through the lens of tragedy and comedy; Petra (Petra Massey) sees an opportunity to have her big moment as an actress – we can do Ophelia, right? Aitor (Aitor Basauri) wants to be taken seriously as a great Shakespearean actor and gets help from a Terry Gilliam-style Sir Shakespeare (a giant projection by Sam Bailey). Stephan (Stephan Kreiss) wants to shag Petra, flash the audience, and achieve a theatrical first; two onstage deaths simultaneously. Such lack of coherence has to lead to disaster (it's Shakespeare folks) so although initially Toby's ambition holds sway -'art shouldn't be about pleasure'- gradually his pomposity is pricked by the other three characters' driving need to be funny at all costs. All four performers are accomplished clowns, not in the falling apart car bucket of custard sense, but with great physical prowess and comic timing. The company is nearly twenty years old; they have an impressive track record of anarchy and absurdity as entertainment.

It isn't all slapstick humour; parts are creepy and sinister and Hamlet's demise is genuinely affecting. A passing knowledge of some Shakespeare on the page and in performance helps to get some of the gags and the mickey take of various theatrical styles; stuffy formal acting, bad interpretive dance, inappropriate use of onstage cameras and shadow puppetry. If onstage nudity makes you anxious, it is brief and funny so don't let that put you off going.

It doesn't always work, partly because there are so many ideas and themes jostling for position and partly because you can see some of the jokes driving down a much driven highway from a long way away. However like all good theatre it does leave you thinking. Death is after all the only certainty. How you get there and the footprints you leave do matter, however few lines of dialogue you are given along the way.

Having had the benefit of reviewing the excellent Shakespeare's Dead exhibition at the Weston Library, it seemed more than fortuitous that those clever people at Spymonkey had condensed and adapted all 75 onstage death scenes into one seamless production. Clearly they are fools or quite mad – or both!

Well actually they are highly qualified clowns; or is that a contradiction in terms?

Adapted and directed by Tim Couch, we have a veritable smorgasbord of theatrical styles and tropes – Avant Garde, classical, contemporary dance, mime, puppetry, vaudeville and general buffoonery the bloody countdown in the kill room setting awaiting us – complete with digital countdown and a surtitled presagement of doom. Maybe the smorgasbord analogy is wrong (on many levels), but Titus Andronicus shows us alternative things to do with pies - Yuck!

Toby Park takes the role of onstage leader, thought policeman and angry young man; strongly motivated to change Spymonkey's direction, no fun to be expected here. The evening is to be a gruelling journey to examine our mutual mortality (he's doomed!). In the meantime, Aitor Basauri follows his own a surreal dream to be taken seriously as a great Shakespearean thesp – maybe there's an RSC talent scout in the audience – oh dear! Stephan Kreiss has baser, more carnal designs on Petra Massey (love's labours and all that); whom in turn is fixated on a career defining realisation of Ophelia's death; dashed by Toby because it's not an 'onstage' death. Tensions will abound and tragedy is never far away.

Meticulous adherence to text and tone is not what we get here. Having a general feel for Shakespeare's Folio is helpful for some of the jokes, but by no means essential. This is a fantastic fatal fantasy romp across the battlefields, blasted heaths, bedrooms, courts, crypts and dungeons.

After much laughter and some genuinely well-conceived murderous action (the paper puppetry hand-held camera demise of Cinna the Poet from Julius Caesar was surprisingly effective and dark) the clock ticked down; so, what's done is done.

The rest is silence…