Penguins as you have never seen them before!

“I wasn’t trained by Lecoq”

Garry Starr

Note: DWS is Gaulier Drama trained

Soho commuters were treated to an unexpected sight this morning as Garry Starr and a flock of penguins (of the human variety) took to the streets with their favourite Penguin Classics in hand. Please note: no animals were harmed during these events. Led by comedian Garry Starr, the nine “penguins” gathered on Great Newport Street to share their love of reading and classic literature, each clutching a Penguin Classic as they took in the sights of the West End.

In 28 years of reviewing, I have never seen anything like it nor do I ever expect to. In the late 1990s there was some fully frontal male nudity but it was like “Still Life” and motionless. More recently, male nudity has been restricted to the odd flash of a bare bum. Even Nicole Kidman’s nudity at the Donmar in The Blue Room in 1998 was very low lit and only visible from the cheapest side seats upstairs to one side of the Circle. So if, as David Lan says, “We remember the visuals of theatre, the pictures,” I challenge any of you to forget the sight of a Glorious Garry Starr (quoting Joe Orton) “in the rude”.

Stripping back to the basics, in tailed jacket, ruff, top hat and orange penguin flippers, Garry Starr delivers his own zany summaries of many of the Orange Paperback Penguin Classics. What they lack in illustrations, Garry Starr will recreate for you with an emphasis on lampoonery. The books are in a bookcase and as each one is dealt with, they are thrown up and lobbed away. There is music and songs to illustrate some.

You will remember The Wind in the Willows (Don’t ask how!) to finding again Saint Exupery’s Le Petit Prince ( Again Don’t Ask Where!). Starr may be onstage on his own but members of the audience will be invited to join in, in some very unexpected ways. It is the spontaneity that I don’t wish to spoil for all those of you privileged to get a ticket to this ingenious and anarchic show.

Something I didn’t know before, these are the synonyms for Moby: behemothic, colossal, enormous, gargantuan, giant, huge, immense, jumbo, mammoth, monstrous, tremendous and vast. Just saying!

He very cleverly ties up the links between the books, so a tied up Gulliver, courtesy an audience member, leads to The Great Escape. It is as if someone is playing Charades of the classic Penguin books and each scene must link to the last charade. Full of invention, imagination, absurdity and laughter.

The highlight of the evening for me was one which involved many members of the audience. Sorry erase that, correct to many people in the audience and a lone member. I haven’t laughed so much in so long and I still have a big grin on my face writing about Garry Starr. Alongside the laughter is the novelty of not being sure we can believe what we are actually seeing from this impeccably timed clowning. The finale is spectacular as the escort Penguins seen outside the theatre beforehand, join the show and I mean show!

This show is sharing the Arts Theatre with Choir of Man on Sundays and some Mondays to mid December when it will move to Australia in 2026.

In a first, Theatrevibe, the site that doesn’t do stars awards six well deserved stars to Garry Starr : Penguin Classics.