Review: GARRY STARR: CLASSIC PENGUINS, The Other Palace

Not all heroes wear capes. Garry Starr’s mission is to save literature (or at least the books printed in Penguin’s series of orange-and-black paperbacks) and he’s going to do it looking like a Tudor prince who has come straight from an nudist beach. 

Adorned with little more than flippers, a black tailcoat, a white ruff and a top hat, this clown is a class act. Maybe, though, not the classiest: Starr isn’t one for social conventions and goes out of his way to stick a boot straight through the fourth wall. Those who disobey the first rule of cabaret will end the show with more than just an eyeful and maybe less clothing than they came in with. 

Starr is appearing at The Other Palace as part of its Francesca Moody season. The two other works being showcased from her stable (Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree and Marcelo Dos Santos’s Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen) steer much closer to what an audience can expect from a theatrical experience. Classic Penguins, though, is an exemplary example of an attempt to swim the other way and challenge what is permissible and safe (for both himself and volunteers). 

Moody has an enviable track record of taking Fringe hits like Fleabag and Baby Reindeer and introducing them to a wider audience be it via streaming or a long run in the West End. She has said that she is in the business of building modern classics. That sentiment makes it either brave or very funny that her winter residency at The Other Palace includes a man taking the actual classics apart. Quite how Starr fits in with her usual strategy is unknown. It’s not that he is short on quality or a following — this is Classic Penguins’ fourth London run and its longest yet — but his brand of entertainment is best seen in more intimate environments than the multi-tier venues along Shaftesbury Avenue.

The alter ego of Australian comic Damien Warren‑Smith is the very model of a modern clown. His top-tier education from Ecole Philippe Gaulier serves him well and means that his bread and butter is absolute absurdity; those expecting something different will leave somewhat disappointed. The only thing remotely predictable here is the constant pattern of selecting a book from his shelves of Penguins, showing us its title via a live video feed and then giving us his own spin on it before he dashes the tome to the ground and picks the next classic.

Some of the Cal McCrystal-directed skits are more obvious than others. Robert Drewe’s The Bodysurfers sees the naked Starr carried over the audience, passed from row to row until he reaches the back, while a magnificent two-foot leap is the result of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Others are far more oblique: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein becomes an unexpectedly dark cabaret as the performer poignantly sings Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” And his nudity is not there just for shock value. At least, not entirely. For Hermann Melville’s Moby Dick, for example, Starr pulls together a bald cap, a familiar Nineties tune and an energetically windmilling of the penis.

The audience is a key component of Classic Penguins’s appeal. Even those far from the front rows are not immune from being involved in some fashion. The plucky volunteers invited up on stage take part in a variety of book-related tasks. These range from sitting very, very still with one’s head between one’s knees to stripping everything off. Starr's crowdwork is all done with supreme confidence and there's a real sense that we are always laughing with whoever is up there, never at. Be wary, though: the re-enactment of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island should only be attempted by the brave at heart or budding amateur proctologists.

Its clear throughout that Starr stands on the shoulders of clown giants and, in Puddles Pity Party, a giant clown. Like his body, this frenetic penguin lays out his influences for all to see: the terrifying menace that is Doctor Brown, the shameless slapstick of Spymonkey, Meow Meow's wicked unpredictability and the confrontational vulnerability of Red Bastard. 

But those looking for literary illumination can forget it. Unlike Salty Brine’s emotional and intelligent mashups of seminal books and iconic musical back catalogues, Starr skims the surface of the literary canon like a penguin on a belly-slide: slick, fast and utterly shallow. The Fringe-friendly show length and the TikTok tempo mean that, once Starr begins his mad journey, it is impossible to be bored. This is literature as contact sport, not contemplation, and that’s both its triumph and its trap. Even if Classic Penguins is more of a shower than a grower, Christmas has come early for lovers of all things quirky.

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins continues at The Other Palace until 3 January 2027