Latest news with #DamienWarrenSmith
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Stupider than everyone else': one comic's semi-naked bid to perform dozens of Penguin novels
Comedy smash-hits come in all shapes and sizes. You've got your standup, your sketch – and then there are those shows in which semi-naked Australians impersonate penguins to dramatise the western literary canon. Such is Garry Starr: Classic Penguins by 43-year-old goofball Damien Warren-Smith, which delighted Edinburgh last summer, then hoovered up awards on the Australian festival circuit. After winning the prestigious Best Show gong at Melbourne's Comedy festival ('for me that's a Commonwealth gold,' says Warren-Smith, 'and Edinburgh's the Olympics'), this unlike-anything-else comedy set is now returning to the UK, picked up by fringe super-producer Francesca (Fleabag) Moody and expanded for bigger audiences. The show, which animates a bookshelf full of Penguin classics in 60 minutes, is not a complete departure for its host. Yet another graduate of celebrated French clown school Ecole Philippe Gaulier, Warren-Smith's first stunt was to showcase every theatre style in under an hour (Garry Starr Performs Everything, 2018), and his second was to bring all of Greek mythology to life in the same timeframe. It's a simple formula, as he admits: 'Choose a highbrow topic that most people know quite a lot about, then just get it wrong – which makes me stupider than everybody else.' Garry, according to his creator, isn't a character, he's just 'the most enthusiastic but slightly less intelligent version of myself. He's like me if I had no inhibitions.' In Classic Penguins, that 'eternal optimist and over-reacher' turns his attention towards great books. Clad in tailcoat, flippers and alarmingly little else, our lanky host performs one inexplicable stunt onstage after another – then explains them by revealing the title of the next book off his paperback pile. 'I was in a Perth bookshop two years ago,' he says, 'and happened to notice those beautiful, aesthetically appealing orange and cream spines on the shelf, and the penny dropped. I was like, 'Oh my God, it's got to be [my next show].' I called my producer straight away. I then put together a list of over 100 books, and went through it giving them the Garry treatment. What is the one thing I know about this book already? Frankenstein builds a monster, say. And what could Garry get wrong about it?' Watching the show, the pleasure is intense as you puzzle out Garry's doofus misinterpretation, what bizarre visual gag or literary pun is now unfolding in front of you. But what flips the show from bookish brain-tease into raise-the-roof party-comedy is the involvement of its audience. 'I never made a conscious decision to push things as far as I could [with audience participation],' says Warren-Smith, on Zoom from Oz. 'But being on my own, I wanted to play with people.' Being on his own wasn't always the plan: Warren-Smith has variously worked as an actor, and as part of the clown troupe A Plague of Idiots. His solo career began, reluctantly, when they disbanded. 'So now, if I had an idea for a scene that needed two people – well, I couldn't pay someone to be a plant. So I'd just ask audience members to help.' In Classic Penguins, spectators are duly invited to be shot, tied to the floor, to manhandle our naked host, and join him in bringing Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book to very improbable life. That latter scene is one of Warren-Smith's favourites, for reasons I can't reveal without spoilers. Another is his Wind in the Willows skit, the 'puerile' (his word) content of which you can probably guess. 'There's about 30% of the audience who just can't control themselves after that.' What concerns its creator, now the show (and his career) is scaling up, is whether he can keep his percentages that high. 'When I saw Ricky Gervais in a stadium, it was completely un-thrilling. If the only way to make money is live, and you have to get bigger to do it – or stay smaller and charge more – that doesn't interest me. I'd rather continue to make work my way and not be famous or wealthy.' I suspect there might be a middle way, for an act – and a show – whose potency certainly won't be limited to small rooms. That would be good news for Warren-Smith, because 'for 45 minutes after every show as Garry, I am just buzzing. Every single show, I have to pinch myself, because when I was an actor I never found that kind of freedom and pleasure.' But if all else fails, Classic Penguins may have opened up other professional avenues. 'On the last night in Edinburgh, this woman came up to me and said, 'Have you read all these books? Do you read a lot? Would you be interested in being a judge for the Booker prize?' I was like, 'Aah, yeah, sure. Drop me an email!' Thinking this was maybe a crazy person.' He's since been told it was legit. 'And had I not dismissed it quite so much,' he says, just a little wistfully, 'maybe I could be a Booker judge by now …' Classic Penguins is at Soho theatre, London, from 14-26 July, then at Underbelly George Square, Edinburgh, from 30 July to 24 August
ABC News
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Comedian Garry Starr takes his award-winning nude clown show Classic Penguins on tour
Imagine a man crowd-surfing wearing nothing but penguin flippers, a top hat and tails. That's Damien Warren-Smith as his comedy alter ego, Garry Starr, in his now-award-winning show, Classic Penguins. In the show, Warren-Smith tries to perform every Penguin Classic novel ever written. And he does it (mostly) nude. The crowd-surfing? It's a reference to one of those novels, The Bodysurfers, by Australian writer Robert Drewe. And Warren-Smith assures audiences participation is optional. "I'm really, really clear that you can opt out," he told ABC Radio National's The Stage Show. In April, Classic Penguins took out the top prize at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, an accolade previously won by some of Australia's most successful comics, including Sam Campbell (Taskmaster UK), Hannah Gadsby (Nanette) and Rhys Nicholson (Drag Race Down Under). The show is about to arrive in Sydney, before touring to Wagga Wagga and regional Victoria in June, then to London and the Edinburgh Fringe. But it's not the first time Warren-Smith has crowd-surfed nude. That was last year, at the variety show Stamptown, at Edinburgh Fringe, following the lead of host Zach Zucker. "I came away from that thinking, 'Wow, that was really fun. I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to do that in my own show.'" Warren-Smith was born in the north of Scotland, but moved with his family to Cooma in regional NSW when he was a kid. After high school, he went to acting school in Sydney, and soon landed a small role on classic Australian drama Love My Way. He quickly realised his heart wasn't in screen acting and relocated to London, where he tried to make it as a theatre actor. "I was living on a friend's couch and rehearsing one Fringe play during the day while performing another one at night," he says. It was after 12 years of trying to make it in theatre that Warren-Smith discovered clowning at the Edinburgh Fringe, where he watched Brighton-based physical theatre company Spymonkey perform their show about Moby Dick. "It had absolutely nothing to do with Moby Dick, and I laughed more than I ever had in my life," Warren-Smith says. He discovered many performers in Spymonkey had trained under Philippe Gaulier, at the French clown master's school about an hour outside of Paris. It's the alma mater of international stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson, as well as much-loved Australian performers Tom Walker and Laurie Luxe. Warren-Smith hopped on a train to France to learn from the master, who is known for insulting his students. "[Gaulier] will choose something about you — a vocal quality, a physicality, a character trait that you have — and put the knife in and twist it to really make you vulnerable," he explains. "[But] by that point in my career, I was OK with that because I already had enough proof for myself that I was a good performer." Gaulier's training taught Warren-Smith the thing that is funniest about you is the thing you might have hidden, or feel ashamed of; the thing a horrible person would say about you after you left the room. So, Warren-Smith asked someone at clown school what she noticed about him. She replied: "You think you can do everything." It's a quality he thinks comes from being mostly raised by a single mum, after his dad died when he was young. She encouraged him to do whatever he wanted to do, whether that was play the trumpet or ski cross country. "I do have this in-built belief that I can do anything, but it hurt at the time to hear that," he says. Fast-forward to 2018, and the clown school comment became the title of his debut solo show: Garry Starr Performs Everything; and landed him rave reviews in Melbourne, Brighton and Edinburgh. "It was me saying: 'The performing arts are going to die if I'm not involved, so I'm now going to do every single genre of theatre,'" Warren-Smith says. "It didn't seem too far removed from who I was as a performer." It was the start of Warren-Smith trying to perform "all" of something. He took on Greek mythology in both Garry Starr Conquers Troy and Greece Lightning, and now, those beloved orange paperbacks, Penguin Classics. Garry Starr Performs Everything, which featured a nude ballet sequence, was also Warren-Smith's first time clowning naked. It's something he's taken into all of his shows since. "After my first two shows, where I would get naked at one point, some people would roll their eyes and be like: 'Are you going to get naked in your new one as well?' "I went, 'Yeah, OK. I'll just start the show naked.'" It makes Classic Penguins Warren-Smith's most naked show yet. But he doesn't "really think about it much". Audiences don't either. Some people have told him they forgot about his nakedness through the course of the show — until they remembered. "You forget that I'm naked until the moment comes where it's important again, like if I'm hugging somebody or jumping up and down or doing a cartwheel," he says. But Warren-Smith didn't initially set out to make a fully naked show. He knew early on he needed to dress as a penguin. (Starr tells audiences he thinks Penguin Classics are literally written by penguins.) Looking at penguin costumes, the comedian realised he would have to wear a white lycra material, which would quickly get dirty and restrict what he'd be able to do on stage. "I said, 'What if I paint myself white?'" he recalls. "Then someone said to me, 'But you are white. Why don't you just not wear anything?' "It just heightened everything." Audiences have praised Warren-Smith for his body positivity, but he's not deliberately including messages in his work: "I don't want to lay [particular meanings] on too thick, because I think everyone gets something different." The other theme audiences talk to Warren-Smith about is the need for joy and silliness. "Clowning really crosses all of the social, political language, all the barriers, and it brings people together," Warren-Smith says. "It's the oldest form of comedy: We were tripping over for other people's amusement before we were talking." Garry Starr: Classic Penguins is at Bondi Pavilion from May 29-June 1, before touring to Wagga Wagga, Wangaratta and Cowes.
