Damien Warren-Smith lets it all hang out as alter ego Garry Starr in Classic Penguins (photo by Austin Ruffer)
GARRY STARR: CLASSIC PENGUINS
Studio Seaview
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 11, $45-$155
studioseaview.com
www.garrystarr.com
Jackass meets the literati in the utterly insane, completely brilliant, and exhilaratingly entertaining Garry Starr: Classic Penguins. Starr is the clown alter ego of Australian writer, producer, and performer Damien Warren-Smith, who previously appeared as Starr in Greece Lightning, about Greek mythology, Garry Starr Performs Everything, exploring different styles of theater, and the family-friendly Monkeys Everywhere, in which he interacts with simian sidekicks.
Classic Penguins is most definitely not for children or the faint of heart. The official website warns, “This event is strictly 18+. Please be aware that this production includes full nudity, strobes, haze, recorded gunshots, and sudden loud noises. Audience participation will be invited at the discretion of the performer and is voluntary. By purchasing a ticket, you acknowledge the inherent risks of voluntarily participating in a live performance, including physical activity and close contact with the performer, and release all producers and venue operator from claims based on negligence, except for gross negligence or willful misconduct.”
As ticket holders enter the theater, Starr is already onstage, seated in a leather chair, its back to the audience; only his top hat and orange flippers are visible. He is watching a monitor on which, at first, burning logs in a fireplace are projected while Mozart’s Laudate Dominum (Vesperae Solennes De Confessore, K.339) is playing, by the London Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Cassovia, Kosice Teacher’s Choir, and others. To his left is a treasure chest; to his right is a small bookcase with a globe, a skull, a plant, and more than three dozen orange-and-white Penguin Classics paperbacks. Soon the video of the logs are replaced by photos of famous paintings in which a cartoon penguin has been inserted in key places, a quick turn from the civilized to what will become more and more uncivilized by the minute. The penguin finds itself in such masterpieces as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, and John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott.
When the show proper begins, Starr spins around in the chair to reveal that he is dressed as a penguin, with a white ruff collar, an open black tailcoat — and nothing else. He is naked from the waist down, his willy hanging free. He explains that he is attempting to save literature and penguins from extinction, so for the next hour, he performs, in one way or another, each of the novels on the shelf, either riffing on the title, the author, and/or the plot. Before, during, or after each vignette, he places the paperback on the top of the bookcase so a camera can project it onto the monitor for everyone to see; afterward, he slides it onto the floor.
For example, early on, he dons a bald cap, shakes his hips so his schlong twirls, and then reveals Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The bald cap references the singer and animal-rights activist Moby, whose real name is Richard Melville Hall; many of Warren-Smith’s gimmicks are layered with such neat twists, although you don’t have to get them all to still laugh yourself silly.
Starr also incorporates meta info about many of the books; for example, he brings up Oscar Isaac and Jabob Elordi when doing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (they starred in Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 Oscar-nominated adaptation), and Kate Bush’s 1978 song “Wuthering Heights” is heard while he takes on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, with another nod to Elordi.
Garry Starr (Damien Warren-Smith) performs dozens of Penguin Classics with the help of many audience members (photo by Austin Ruffer)
Eventually, he loses the coat and flippers and is essentially fully naked the rest of the way, never failing to grab a chance to dangle his Johnson at or expose his butt cheeks to the audience, some of whom volunteer to come onstage and assist him with his crazier and crazier antics and impressive acrobatics. The night I went, the crowd was particularly spry and fearless, getting involved in shenanigans I never thought I would see in such a venue.
Most of the participants are chosen from the first row, although Starr does his best to not select people he thinks may be actors or improv comics themselves. (Interestingly, the first row is less expensive than the next four rows, perhaps as a thank-you to those ready to strut their stuff.) But that doesn’t mean that others won’t have the chance to high-five Starr, hug him, share some food, and — well, it’s probably best if you don’t know some of the, er, nuttier elements, which involve a whole lot of (consensual) touching, though nothing pornographic (depending on, I guess, what you consider pornographic). If you don’t get picked to participate, you can get your photo taken with a “moist” Warren-Smith in the bar after the show.
Penguin Classics was cofounded in 1946 by E. V. Rieu, whose translation of Homer’s The Odyssey was the first book to be part of the program, which now consists of approximately two thousand novels and nonfiction titles. While it would seem that The Odyssey would be excellent fodder for the play, given all the discussion about Christopher Nolan’s new film and Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation, which is published by a Penguin rival — I can clearly envision Starr in Matt Damon’s Odysseus headgear, replete with tantalizing plume — but it didn’t make the cut. Works by Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott are among the dozens that did.
Classic Penguins may not be as radical or revolutionary as the oeuvre of such downtown legends as Karen Finley, Penny Arcade, Annie Sprinkle, or John Fleck, but it is more accessible and a whale of a good time. Warren-Smith is an engaging performer who knows how to titillate an audience and adapt to whatever happens; the evening I attended, during a fierce fruit fight, an audience member nailed Starr with an orange right in the one-eyed trouser snake, which both surprised and delighted Starr, who needed a moment to recover, not unlike baseball players who get plunked in the crown jewels by a fastball.
Jackass leader Johnny Knoxville — whose desire for adventure was stoked when, at the age of fourteen, he read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, a Penguin Classic not in Starr’s show — would be proud.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]