Review: Garry Starr: Classic Penguins

“It’s going to be fine,” Garry Starr says, with a glint in his eye. “… Unless I do something stupid.” And despite his show’s highfalutin premise, to save literature from extinction by performing every single classic text published by Penguin (or written by penguins?), Starr spends 60 minutes being exceedingly stupid. Wearing flippers, a tuxedo jacket, a ruff, and absolutely nothing else, he clowns his way through a bookshelf’s worth of tightly interlinked skits. It’s rare for nudity to be genuinely essential to a Fringe show, but Starr (aka the comedy persona of Damien Warren-Smith) is a gifted physical performer and manages to make his base body humour integral – and even sweetly tender. But mostly? It’s stupid. Cleverly, brilliantly stupid.

Starr’s commitment to the bit is only surpassed by his audiences’. His fans are prepared to do anything­ (anything!) for the plot, and their willingness to surrender to the silliness is a real testament to Starr’s inclusive chaos. Some genuinely literary, layered puns are smuggled in amongst spectacularly DIY visual gags and big feats of imagination (“You’re a cuckoo,” he convinces one volunteer), all culminating in a truly deserved Big Finish™. Consider literature saved, and a late-night Fringe staple crowned.