Ducktastic!

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Comedy Opened 19 October 2005, Closed 19 November 2005

Albery Theatre St Martin's Lane, London

Las Vegas Comes to London!

Christophe Ursula Sassoon is in the last chance saloon of his career - all his hopes for a return to Las Vegas ride on his show Ducktastic! at London's All Berry (!) Theatre. Roy de la Rue, who is in fact Roy Street, a pet shop owner from Portsmouth, volunteers to help Sassoon out with a trick... but is there real magic in the air tonight... and can Daphne the duck save the day?...

"Packs a terrific comic punch" The Daily Telegraph

The award-winning team that staged the smash hit, guest star studded show The Play What I Wrote now presents their new comedy Ducktastic!, directed by Kenneth Branagh. This new comedy show takes as its inspiration the world famous Las Vegas based magic act Siegfried and Roy who where noted for using white Siberian tigers in their act.

"Ducktastic is the second show from the gang who brought us The Play What I Wrote, a hilarious homage to Erie and Ernie. Kenneth Branagh's shambolic new show is more of a homespun spit-and-sawdust celebration of British variety acts - a box of magic tricks, illusions, double entendres, pratfalls, sequins, ostrich feathers and a real flock of luvvie ducks. Delightful and daft as it is, it's short on the 'ooh, aah, wow' factor." The Mail on Sunday

"A seductive send-up that makes you grin constantly for two hours" The London Evening Standard

"I merrily confess to having a hoot at Ducktastic... a knowingly kitsch extravaganza spoofing Las Vegas magicians and spangled glitz, this is the latest devised show by Hamish McColl and Sean Foley... Now, their pranks might sink like a stone if you really weren't in the mood for sheer silliness... but this duo have an irrepressible ebullience which charms and carries you along, even when you're groaning at their gleefully awful puns or wondering how the whole thing hangs together... Ducktastic ought to be a popular hit" The Independent on Sunday

"The new show from Hamish McColl and Sean Foley is a boisterous tribute to Siegfried & Roy-style stage magic. Yet, despite the constant vigorous thrust of innuendo, some spectacular set-pieces and big-hearted direction from Kenneth Branagh, in true duck fashion, it's a bit lame... You can feel yourself yearning, straining to love this show, but the truth is, beyond the theatrical in jokes and the knowing gaucheness, it has the style and wit of an off-colour episode of Rent-a-ghost." The Sunday Times

The technical principles of stage illusion and magic have remained almost unchanged for the last 160 or so years. It is the 'glorious wrapping', the stories that turn those inventive techniques into magic, that has moved with the times. And no wrapping was more glorious than that devised by the sensational Las Vegas magic act Siegfried and Roy. Their combination of live white tigers, mind-boggling illusions and beautifully judged camp showbiz excess put them at the top of American showbusiness for over a decade. Ducktastic owes its inspiration to their amazing entertainment. But with one crucial difference - they had 20 Bengal tigers, Ducktastic has a white duck. Also unlike Siegfried and Ray, the magicians in Ducktastic - Christopher Ursula Sassoon and Ray de le Rue - get lost in their own show, their 'magic' seemingly out of control. To be sure, like the magicians of old, they have dressed up their illusions with stories that they hope will touch the audience's hearts end reveal the Mysteries of Nature; unfortunately for them, their duck-themed extravaganza bites, or rather quacks, back at them.