Up to this evening, I had been under the misapprehension that the Penguin Classics – that global bookshelf of iconic titles in cheap-as-chips paperbacks – were written by people.

Not so. A short documentary clip aired during this performance put me straight: they’re not written by people, but by penguins. Emperor penguins, to be precise. And Garry Starr is … kinda … one of them; a French-accented, top-hat-and-frock-coat-wearing (but otherwise butt-naked) penguin on a last-ditch mission to convince humankind of the value of “leet-ter-raa-tura”.

 Garry Starr. Photo Matt Crockett

A hit in Edinburgh in 2024 (it’s heading back there this year) and winner of the Best Show gong at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 2025, Garry Starr: Classic Penguins is low comedy for high brows, using some of the great novels of the past 200 years as a springboard into an hour of brilliantly orchestrated stunt-comic mayhem.

Sometimes a book’s title inspires a throwaway line or stunt; at other times, it inspires more complex routines (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example) that draw audience members onstage for chaotic scenes blending improv with gross-out comedy. Kudos to those who volunteered to be “fed” mushed-up...