Comedy / Greece Lightning, Garry Starr. At The Q, Queanbeyan, February 16. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

Garry Starr was one of the big hits of The Q’s 2023 season, appearing first to modest houses with his performance of Starr Performs Everything and returning for a second season with much larger audiences.

He’s just been back at The Q for one night, only with his take on all of Greek mythology – purportedly to help save the Greek economy – and it was his birthday!

This is zany, over-the-top stuff, but one of the fascinating aspects of the night was not so much Starr as his followers, in a theatre packed to the rafters with willing victims.

Nobody is saying how this was achieved without planting performers in the house, but this show was top-heavy with invitations for audience members to get on stage, and so talented were some of them at times that Starr had to tone them down, reminding them that he, after all, was the star and performing at a “higher” level.

His stock in trade is spoofing the classics, and that he did throughout.

His Zeus leapt to the mic to perform the song Greased Lightnin’ from Grease.

His Medusa appeared with a headdress comprised of snake lollies, some of which found their way into the mouths of very game audience members.

His Poseidon, complete with crown and trident, reminded us that down where he was, it was “better” because it was “wetter”, while a compliant audience member squirted him from a water pistol to prove it.

His Atlas, clad in a G-string and balancing a green exercise ball, was his nod to environmentalism.

A mother and son in the audience were targeted when he did his Oedipus turn.

Perhaps his most extraordinary journey of the night was through the rear end of the God, Uranus – you get the idea.

Starr’s running joke is that he is a serious actor, who “nearly got into NIDA” and is giving us an evening of High Art, but he undercuts his own pomposity with malapropisms – deforestation is defrostation and he greets the audience with the word calamari instead of Kalimera. There were many more.

The audience loved it.

As for whether some of those who got on stage were plants, at least one of them could act and another could dance, but all had a sense of stage humour – or was it just that The Q’s audiences are naturally talented?

But the end, naked as the day he was born, Starr told his adoring audience of plans for his next show – The Penguin Classics in one hour.

And, he threatened, he’ll be back.