Garry Starr is nothing if not ambitious.
He enters as Zeus, lightning stapled to his chest and proceeds to throw thunderbolts across the crowd with some helpful audience participation.
One of the great delights of this show is the various low fi ways Garry Starr finds to depict gods and goddesses, mythological beings, monsters and myths.
Narcissus falls in love with himself in an imaginary mirror, made of hands, Poseidon rises from the sea with the help of water pistols.
Cerberus is an unexpectedly familiar puppet with extra heads and Gaia is a big blue exercise ball.
Starr, wearing a loincloth and his trademark ruff, shimmies, dances, flirts, sings and leaps around the stage, in a show which holds you aghast from beginning to end.
The loincloth, as always, is insecurely attached and Garry reveals a lot more of himself than is necessary. Little Garry often comes hilariously close to the faces on the front row.
The whole show is an extraordinary feat of physical comedy, athletic, balletic and insanely ridiculous from beginning to end.
Garry’s narrative rests on some hokum plan to restore the Greek economy - and his script is stuffed full of ludicrous malapropisms and misplaced intellectual posturing.
Members of the audience are more than happy to throw sweets, become part of a Greek chorus, get involved in warfare or fight monsters.
Garry even revisits his old fondness for different styles of performance by re enacting the siege of Troy as a German expressionist film.
His appearance as Medusa, in a snakeskin dress and a cycle helmet covered in jelly snakes is a particularly memorable apparition.
Greece Lightning has absolutely nothing to say about Greek mythology and therein lies its brilliance. It is complete and utter nonsense from beginning to end.
With nothing more than some cardboard shapes, dog toys and bits of cloth Starr recreates some of the most memorable images and famous stories in the world.
His final tableau is the birth of civilisation. Garry Starr gives birth to Garry Starr in spectacular fashion. And there again is Little Garry in all his glory.
I laughed and laughed and laughed. This simple, stupid and totally idiotic show may be exactly the medicine we all need.
Garry Starr, Greece Lightning, Underbelly, until August 28. Buy tickets here.
five stars
