Never before has something that made me want to throw up been created with such genius.
Garry Starr (Damien Warren-Smith) is an absolutely superb clown, excelling in the ability to generate laughter through both voice and movement.
The conceit of Classic Penguins is, that in just on 70 minutes, Starr will lead us through every single work of literature published as a Penguin Classic.
In this, he fails. (Intentionally.)
He does not fail in the presentation of a piece of glorious, glee-inspiring comedy.
Very little (if any) knowledge of the classics is needed to enjoy Classic Penguins. The book titles are just clever hooks for Starr to hang some miraculous, madcap mayhem.
I should come back to my opening sentence. High-modal hyperbole it may appear, but I’m being honest about my personal experience of the vomit-inducing nature of the show.
Let me delineate the reasons for my response: Nudity; A lot of nudity; Nudity with a mischievous focus on the less noble aspects of the human physiology; Audience participation (voluntary); Physical stunts performed no doubt safely but with a disconcerting verisimilitude of danger; The flagrant breaking of the 3 second rule regarding food that has fallen to the ground; & The sharing of food mouth-to-mouth.
Two important caveats to the preceding list: It would make more interesting reading if annotated by my psychotherapist; & My response is clearly idiosyncratic – underlined by the fact that the majority of the audience instantaneously leapt to their feet for a standing ovation. (At the end of the show.)
There is something deeply saddening about this brilliantly audacious comedy; not in its execution, but in the response it garnered. The performer’s playful pushing of imaginary boundaries was greeted with such a seemingly universal shocked delighted that I was left with an overwhelming sense of sorrow: Are there really so many souls, who in silent, stultifying desperation, suffer lives of self-imposed imprisonment?
But to these gloomy intimations, perhaps only this can be said: Garry Starr definitely offers The Great Escape; and I really should book in to see that psychotherapist.
Paul Gilchrist
Garry Starr: Classic Penguins – created/written by and starring Damien Warren-Smith,
at Carriageworks until 5 July
Image by Matt Crockett
Theatre Red 