GARRY STARR: CLASSIC PENGUINS
Arts Theatre
★★★★★
“a show of sparkling brilliance”
Let’s start with the show warning: “contains nudity and mild language”. Missing from this warning is “danger from collapse as a result of extreme laughing”.
This is not the show for you if naked bodies on stage offend your sensibilities. Garry Starr gets on with the show (or gets it all off?) from the moment he swings his chair around to face us – he’s been patiently waiting with his back to the audience as we take our seats. It’s all there – yes, I mean all the naughty bits – on full show. The audience explodes in laughter which pretty much never stops as the next 70 minutes roars past like a Southern Ocean squall.
And don’t expect any respect for the great literature of the Cream and Orange Penguin paperbacks era. Garry Starr – the creation of Australian comic Damien Warren-Smith – gallops through all the great books – everything from Hamlet (nodding to Garry’s former take on Shakespeare) to The Grapes of Wrath. The works are stacked on a bookshelf at the front of the stage, the titles projected on a screen at the back – set in a silver foil Antarctic mountain – as he pulls each one out then carelessly tosses it on the floor when that sketch moves on.
This is a show of sparkling brilliance. Garry/Damien is a master of mime, clowning, improvisation and wordplay. Part of the fun for us in the seats is the guessing game as the title appears. Will this one be a pun on the title? Just think what you might do with Moby Dick. Or will a member of the audience be hauled on stage to help connect four apparently unrelated titles?
It’s a one man show – and it’s not. It’s cleverly scripted – and it leaves so much to chance. It’s a riff on the classics, yet it is a fond recall of so many great books. It’s an extreme performance in the nude, yet it doesn’t shock. Despite all the comic potential, there isn’t a single barb. Garry the character is all the greater, because of the warmth Warren-Smith shows as a performer.
Garry has built up a following. In the queue to get into the theatre was a group to one side in penguin costumes, each carrying one of the eponymous books: a band of costumed fans like those waiting to attend a singalong performance of ‘Sound of Music’. That too proved a piece of pageantry. The performance starts even before you enter.
GARRY STARR: CLASSIC PENGUINS
Arts Theatre
Reviewed on 3rd November 2025
by Louis Sibley
Photography by Matt Crockett (main images) Jeff Moore (outdoor images)
Previously reviewed at this venue:
THE CHOIR OF MAN | ★★★★★ | October 2025
PORNO | ★★★ | November 2023
THE CHOIR OF MAN | ★★★★ | October 2022
THE CHOIR OF MAN | ★★★★★ | November 2021
