Garry Starr: Classic Penguins

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Don’t believe all you hear: Damien Warren-Smith appearing as his alter ego Garry Starr in Classic Penguins is entirely in the nude. However, all the ads say he covers all 1,000+ Penguin paperbacks, when in fact he uses about 50. This inimitable Australian comic is one of the funniest men on the planet and makes this hilarious and at times gross show a madcap and fast review of literature. You do not need to have read the books to enjoy the jokes as in most cases the titles tell it all.

When he first appears in a leather armchair, Garry is dressed in an Elizabethan ruff, a top hat, a black tail coat, orange flippers and nothing else, but he quickly loses the coat and hat. The nudity eventually becomes commonplace like the undressed bathers on the beach – you get used it – but he reminds us periodically of his nudity by his antics. The point of the show is to save great literature. Some books get more time than others. There is a great deal of audience participation, always voluntary, and mainly from the first row. The orange and white Penguin paperbacks are revealed by a camera hookup (on top of a small bookcase) which projects each title on to a huge screen above his head. Beginning with Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, he works his way through to R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End in 65 minutes.

Some are elaborate skits including audience members, others are obvious jokes (swinging his genitalia to music by Moby for Herman Melville’s Moby- Dick; having the audience perform in waves to honor Virigina Woolf’s novel), while others are physical comedy undergone by Garry. Some are quite slight like smelling his wrist for Patrick Susskind’s Perfume and revealing Yorick’s skull for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Sometime he juxtaposes titles: for John Fowles’ The Collection he makes a circuit of the audience asking (and getting donations) and then follows it up with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto where he redistributes his newly found wealth.

Others require much exertion from him: revolving 80 times holding a globe as we count his revolutions for Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, and for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, he flies over the audience on a rope while a volunteer uses a leaf blower to propel him back and forth. Others require audience members to join him on stage. For Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath he is asks a volunteer to throw a basket of grapes at him which he attempts to catch in his mouth, while for Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange he is pelted with the requisite fruit. For Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he dons a set of fangs and then chugs an entire bottle of blood red tomato juice. Much of the fun is the speed of these unexpected set pieces. Introducing The Bodysurfers by Robert Drewe, he then launches himself at the audience who are required to lift and pass him to the back of the house.

Some skits involve volunteers who are as uninhibited as Garry: for Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, he asks for two volunteers, and total strangers, to be intimate smooching on stage. For Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, an audience member volunteers to be taped down on the stage floor just as the Lilliputians did in the novel. For Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, a volunteer is asked to come up on stage and get nude with Garry. Initially, there is a visual joke before we see the outcome of this. This is not the only nudity to be seen on stage!

Some skits push the envelope but by then we are expecting anything: for Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Garry cavorts to the movie theme song, Henry Mancini’s “Moon River,” and then, we wouldn’t expect any less, he moons the audience, not just once but twice. By the time we are ready for anything, he has an audience member with gloves provided help do a search of his person to accompany Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince which reaches a level of grossness which gets a huge laugh.

Garry Starr (or Damien Warren-Smith to use his real name) is a consummate clown on a par with the silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Charismatic and charming, he has the audience in the palm of his hand. Directed by Cal McCrystal, there is not a false note in the show. Whether a visit to Studio Seaview will get you reading any of these books is a good question. However, you may never be able to approach some of these titles again without laughing out loud in the future.

Gary Starr: Classic Penguins (extended through October 11, 2026)

Studio Seaview, 305 W. 43^rd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.tickets.studioseaview.com

Running time: 70 minutes without an intermission