IF you were asked to identify a grave-digger in literature, chances are you would remember Hamlet, and that blackly comic scene by Ophelia’s grave when the prince picks up the skull of the clown he remembers from childhood and proceeds to ruminate on the fragility of life. This provides the inspiration for the new Ridiculusmus show, Alas! Poor Yorick, which comes to Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange, on Friday 11th April at 7.30pm

This famous scene with the gloomy gravedigger (maybe the only literary one that most people remember) provides the starting point for the surreal clowning skills of this brilliant physical theatre company.

Hamlet uses the discovery of Yorick’s skull, in the newly dug grave, to riff on life, death and decay – in their show, Ridiculusmus look through the eyes of the men digging Ophelia’s grave for an excavation of work and political systems.

Alas! Poor Yorick draws variously on popular culture and the writings of the radical anarchist anthropologist and Karl Marx to present a relentless critique of our institutional failings, hypocritical cultural mores and political inadequacies, all wrapped up in a largely silent clown show.

Mashing up the serious with the silly in trademark style, Ridiculusmus meld their formative influences – The Two Ronnies, Samuel Beckett and the absurdist film director Roy Anderson – with Shakespeare’s original text.

The show is described as a Stoppardian homage that metaphorically explores work, political systems and religion in an hour of slapstick, the original text and a new spin on 400-year-old jokes.

There is one more performance in our region, on 12th May at Exeter’s Phoenix arts centre.