DUCKTASTIC.
London
DUCKTASTIC
by Hamish McColl and Sean Foley
Albery Theatre
Mon-Sat 8.15pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm
Runs 1hr 50min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 950 0920
www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk (£1.25 booking fee for ‘phone and online sales)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 October
Ducks and Drake steal the show.
Ducktastic may not be art, but it’s head-on showbiz. If Sean Foley and Hamish McColl (collectively, The Right Size duopoly) can’t escape the shadow of their previous outing under Kenneth Branagh’s direction, that’s because the earlier piece, the Morecambe and Wise tribute The Play What I Wrote, is echoed here in Foley’s tortuous play-what-Ernie-wrote syntax, while Eric’s recalled in McColl’s stated delight in performing at London’s “All Berry” theatre. More fundamentally, the comedy duo dynamic also recurs in the shifting status between McColl’s illusionist, staging a history-of-the-world in terms of man and duck to win back his estranged wife, and Foley’s man from the Street, an audience volunteer who falls for a stage-struck usher.
Las Vegas shouts out from every tacky-glam setting in the show, contrasted by designer Alice Power with the simply shabby backstage areas where the Usher’s mother gets magicked to the Taj Mahal while her irate father undergoes his own transformations. These scenes also bring the familiar Right Sizery comic routines and running-gags. And Vegas was home to illusionists Siegfried and Roy, whose tiger-accompanied act lies behind Ducktastic. A sensible change; one of the Vegas men was mangled by their animal; the Right Size are merely upstaged by theirs.
This is a Duck called Daphne, though whether she’s the real star among the Duck chorus finally unleashed across the stage, or there’s a nightly Daphne-duck rota, mirroring Play What I Wrote’s changing star guests, is a stage secret. The creatures are provided by Birds & Animals UK, though the idea there’s a stage school (or Agency) for ducks et al might itself be a fantasy start-point for a Right Size extravaganza.
How much fun you find it depends on how you take your entertainment: with puns or without, daft or serious. For me, the Right Size reached a peak in Stop Calling Me Vernon, a rib-threateningly comic hour. In comparison, this is fitfully funny. But who’d deny them the magnitude of a West End stage? Or the credibility-defying wonders conjured up by Simon Drake’s illusions, culminating in an Usherette sawn in half in full audience view. Nightly.
Christophe Ursula Sassoon: Hamish McColl
Roy Street: Sean Foley
With: Alex Kelly, Clive Hayward, Liz Crowther, Kyle Reece, Ruby Snape, Simone de la Rue, Daphne
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Designer/Costume: Alice Power
Lighting: Patrick Woodroffe
Sound: Simon Baker
Music: Steve Parry
Choreographer: Michael Rooney
Magic: Simon Drake
Ducks: Birds & Animals UK
2005-10-25 14:49:40