Entering Le Cascadeur at the Garden of Unearthly Delights, a man sits in a swivelling armchair with his back to the audience. A bookshelf containing Penguin Classic novels sits to the right and a treasure chest to the left. This is the setting for Garry Starr: Classic Penguins, an absurdist (mostly) one-man show that is balls to the wall hilarious and manages to be both clever and stupid simultaneously.

 Starr making his dramatic appearance whilst wearing nothing more than a tuxedo jacket, Elizabethan collar and flippers sets the tone for a show that is a chaotic, laugh-out-loud literary tornado. Literature, books, words. Penguin novels to be precise. This is the basis of the show and throughout the next hour Starr is a whirlwind.

Damien Warren-Smith, the mad genius behind Garry Starr, has clearly read at least some books in his life (or at least skimmed the blurbs), and centuries of literary excellence are crammed into an hour of sheer nonsense. Moby Dick? Quite literally. Frankenstein? An unwitting doctor brings his monster to life. Many of the stories are familiar and done in such a rapid pace and always with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge. The audience interactivity then brings it to another level.

With a mix of clowning, physical comedy, and sheer, unfiltered lunacy, Starr flips, flops, and flails his way through the literary canon at breakneck speed.  At one point, he rips a doll’s head off a bottle of tomato juice to drink its “blood” in the Dracula skit. Then he lets an aggressive audience member hurl fruit at him Grapes of Wrath style. It’s truly a marvel to witness, and just when you think you’ve seen it all, the surprises keep coming.

It’s a highbrow show for lowbrow audiences and a lowbrow show for highbrow audiences, somehow managing to be both intellectually absurd and absurdly intellectual. The genius of Warren-Smith’s performance is that it feels both completely out of control and yet meticulously crafted—like watching an artist set fire to their own painting, only to reveal an even better masterpiece underneath.

By the end, the audience was in tatters. Not metaphorically—physically. People were doubled over, wiping away tears of laughter, and wondering whether they had just hallucinated the last hour. It’s clear to see why Garry Starr: Classic Penguins has already won a Weekly Fringe Award for this incredible show.

An absolute must-see for anyone who loves literature, comedy, or watching a man in flippers save (or destroy?) the Western literary canon.

**** Five stars.

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins is on at Le Cascadeur at the Garden of Unearthly Delights for Adelaide Fringe until Sunday, March 23. Get your tickets here.