Review: GARRY STARR: CLASSIC PENGUINS, Arts Theatre
Photo credit: Jeff Moore
The title and poster art for award-winning cult comedian Garry Starr’s Classic Penguins perfectly encapsulates the flavour of this show’s comedy. Fresh from a triumphant run at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Garry Starr: Classic Penguins is 70 minutes of unremitting silliness, puns and wrong-footing the audience in the most hilarious way.
Starr notoriously performs this show almost completely nude, dressed only in a tailcoat and flippers. Be-flippered and penguin-waddling across the stage, Starr - in little over an hour - performs the comprehensive canon of Penguin classic literature.
You can feel ripples of titillation and even mild nerves throughout the audience at the top of the show, confronted by Starr’s unabashed nakedness. But so charming and so accomplished a clown is Garry that before too long, the audience are throwing themselves into the fray to crowdsurf a butt-naked man across the Arts Theatre auditorium.
The jokes in this show come fast and thick – let alone a laugh a minute, Classic Penguins clocks in a laugh a second. It’s difficult to summarise quite how brilliantly clever Starr is while behaving joyously stupid – and we suppose that is his genius. In the course of a three-minute food fight sequence, being pelted with mushrooms and grapes by an audience volunteer, Starr whips through at least four works of classic literature.
The audience participation is shockingly good – this reviewer (perhaps ill-advisedly) made it up onto the stage at one point, and – without wanting to spoil any surprises – got very up close and personal to Mr Starr with a plastic glove… All this to say, the trust and warmth that Starr cultivates in his audience is not to be underestimated in the slightest.
This show has to be seen to be believed. Uproarious, belly-aching comedy from a masterful clown. Completely unmissable.
***** Five stars
Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett
