GARRY STARR PERFORMS EVERYTHING at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★½

“an hour of squirm-inducing silliness you’ll want to bring all your friends to”

Recently barred from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Garry Starr is on a mission to save theatre from the pretentious establishment who make Billy Shakes boring. To achieve this, he has under an hour to pack in as many genres as possible, to show, solo, how they should really be performed.

It’s a high-energy romp and a quintessential fringe comedy show. One hour of intensely physical theatre best enjoyed after sinking one or two pints. Both to more heartily laugh at the silliness of it all and to more readily volunteer as Garry’s co-star.

Garry, the creation of Damien Warren-Smith, is endearingly eccentric with his lack of self awareness leading to comic error rather than arrogance. He is full of malapropisms – those who don’t understand the theatre are phallustines; we are told about Starr’s semenal work; and introduced to Placeidon – the god of the sea and after birth. Dressed in Elizabethan ruff and too-tight, knee-length leggings-come-breeches, Warren-Smith as Starr gives us a rendition of what Act 2 Scene 2 of Hamlet would have sounded like in Shakespeare’s day. Then, stripping down to a very small and well-stuffed jock-strap, prances about to show us contemporary dance. It is telling that the piece ends with Garry’s take on Cirque Nouveau – for this show owes more to clowns and jesters than it does to Ibsen or Chekhov.

Acclaimed director Cal McCrystal, responsible for directing an early show for The Mighty Boosh and the physical comedy in One Man, Two Guvnors, is an excellent fit for Warren-Smith’s slapstick. But the audience interaction, general lack of clothing and, at times, full frontal nudity, felt like it owed a lot to shows directed by Dr Brown, like Natalie Palamides’ Laid and Courtney Pauruoso’s Gutterplum. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given both Dr Brown and Damien Warren-Smith, the man behind the character, both trained at the Parisian clown academy Ecole Philippe Gaulier.

The show suffers from the Nanette-ification of comedy, where a set is not complete without its final act reckoning with the struggles that forged it. Here it feels contrived and out of kilter with the rest of the outrageous silliness of the rest of the show. Some comedy, particularly clowning and physical theatre, can just be unashamedly funny.

Nonetheless I was stunned when the show ended that an hour had already gone by. I would happily have kept watching whilst Starr took on kitchen-sink drama or Gilbert and Sullivan. Garry Starr’s high energy dramatics hold up a funhouse mirror to theatre making for an hour of squirm-inducing silliness you’ll want to bring all your friends to.

Garry Starr Performs Everything

★★★½

Southwark Playhouse Borough

GARRY STARR PERFORMS EVERYTHING at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★½

“an hour of squirm-inducing silliness you’ll want to bring all your friends to”