Damien Warren-Smith Photo by Austin Ruffer

Garry Starr is the self-proclaimed alter ego of Damien Warren-Smith, who wrote and stars in the show. Equal parts circus clown, stand-up comic, and high school cut-up, Garry will do seemingly anything to get a laugh. As Warren-Smith explained in an interview, "Garry's me if I had zero inhibitions."

An audience member's enjoyment of Classic Penguins will depend heavily on their appreciation for this no-holds-barred approach to comedy. Warren-Smith performs the show entirely naked (except for the moments he is wearing penguin fins, a cutaway tux jacket, and an Elizabethan ruff) and relies on a great deal of audience participation. For instance, spectators might be summoned to help depict scenes from "Frankenstein," "Gulliver's Travels," or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." They might even be tasked with assisting in Garry's crowd-surfing from the front row to the back.

In many ways, I am not the show's target audience. Resolutely inhibited, and as a confirmed germaphobe, I cringed when Garry ate several unwashed grapes off the floor. And I practically crawled under my seat when he passed the chewed pulp, mouth-to-mouth, to an agreeable volunteer. That said, while much of the humor is unabashedly and unapologetically puerile (and some of the gags land better than others), I found a good deal to enjoy in the evening's inspired lunacy.

The impetus behind the comic mayhem is an ominous threat of literary extinction, and only Garry, serving as a Penguin ambassador, can save the masterworks from oblivion. Dropping references to familiar titles and enacting key scenes from others, he gleefully skitters his way through scores of books from the series, tossing them aside with self-satisfied bravado as he goes. (In this production, which originated in Melbourne, Starr uses Australian and UK editions. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, these feature the iconic orange-and-cream stripes.) Playing out like an extended Monty Python sketch, the performance revels in groan-worthy puns, ridiculous physical bits, and astute satire.

Directed by Cal McCrystal, Classic Penguins cleverly merges highbrow references with lowbrow scenarios. One sequence, for example, uses works by Tolstoy, Steinbeck, and Anthony Burgess ("A Clockwork Orange") as the backdrop for an onstage food fight. An allusion to Virginia Woolf's "The Waves" naturally prompts a stadium-style crowd wave in the audience. (Lily Dawford's lighting playfully complements the antics occurring throughout the theatre.)

In addition to Monty Python's Flying Circus, the show recalls performance art of the 1990s, in which nudity was a major component in the work of Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Annie Sprinkle. But rather than making a political or aesthetic statement, nudity here is presumably used to loosen the audience's own hangups and restraints.

After the show, my partner insisted that some of the participants had to be plants. How else could you explain the willingness of audience members to eat masticated grapes directly from Garry's mouth or pluck a Little Prince figurine from his rectum? I later texted a friend who had seen the show the night before and shared my partner's skepticism. He replied: "What did the taped-down Gulliver look like? How about the volunteer exhibitionist?" Comparing notes, it became obvious that they were most certainly different people. (That is, at least to me, my partner is still not convinced.)

Warren-Smith is an ingratiating and skillful comedian. At one point, he takes on the persona of Hamlet, though as a mischievous trickster he more closely resembles Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Still, as utterly fearless Warren-Smith is as Garry Starr, I feel compelled to give a shout-out to some of my fellow audience members. They were similarly dauntless and unbridled, but without prior rehearsal or working from a script, they matched his derring-do beat for beat.