Ducktastic!

Synopsis

Inspired by Siegfried and Roy, the German-born magicians who've been entertaining Las Vegas audiences for more than 30 years. However, whereas Siegfried and Roy have built their act around white Siberian tigers, the Right Size's show is, as the title suggests, built around ducks. In Ducktastic!, world famous illusionist Cornelius Ursula Sassoon who, after an accident with an emu, loses his license to perform in Las Vegas. He teams up with Roy de La Rue, a pet shop proprietor from Portsmouth, to form Sassoon and Roy and put on a new West End show.

Our Review:

20 October 2005

The Olivier and Whatsonstage.com Award-winning success of The Play What I Wrote was always going to be a tough act to follow. That blissfully comic meditation of the nature of comic partnerships, inspired by Morecambe and Wise (who were never mentioned by name), proved also to be an infinitely touching series of theatrical in-jokes that sprang from the unique partnership that created the show, Sean Foley and Hamish McColl (aka The Right Size).

After 13 shows together in 13 years, this was the perfect distillation of The Right Size's way of constantly breaching the theatre's fourth wall as they showed a chaotic performance in progress. And into the midst of the self-referential nature of mayhem that resulted, a changing roster of celebrity guests was also pressed into its nightly service.

Now the duo leap onto the performance high-wire again, and go one stage further with Ducktastic. Conceived in part as a tribute to Siegfr...

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Latest User Review

195.93.21.37) - 19 November 2005:

It seems a pity to review a show on the day it closes but having seen the penultimate night, I felt it deserves comment. It's amazing how the words "all seats £10" can bring into the theatre a sellout audience of enthusiastic punters who are willing to suspend their £45-a-night principles and actually enjoy something they paid for. Although Ducktastic is thin on plot, overloaded with cheap gags and laughable illusions, it's full of energy and fun and if you treat it like a pantomime you can see what a damn shame it is that this show won't last through Christmas when it would be a far fresher and more original family option than watching McKellen wring the neck of Widow Twankey. Sadly, Ducktastic will now give way to a dry old winter's tale of Shakespeare's "comedies" in Cameron's pretentious first season in the newly named Ivor Novello Theatre. Don't think Dear Ivor was much of a one for Shakespeare. As the cod illusionists, McColl and Foley work harder than any two men on the West End stage, supported by a cast which includes the charming Liz Crowther who must recognise half the jokes from when her Dad used to present Crackerjack. The duck imagery wears pancake thin, of course, and the participation of the live ducks is really only a sight gag since they do little more than run from one side of the stage to the other. The staging is heavily dependent on trapdoors, so let's hope they find sufficient touring theatres which can take it, and a price structure that gives them full houses. ...

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