n-e-life.com, 13 September 2005

By Lesley Tudor

Built up as the must see play of the year, reuniting Kenneth Branagh and David Pugh, the same two comedians who wrote and directed "The Play Wot I Worte" [sic], "Ducktastic" has been splashed over all newspapers and bill boards for weeks.

And after the official world premiere performance on Thursday 8 September at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal, now I know why. This play needs all the publicity it can get, for it certainly won’t be selling tickets through word of mouth.

The same jokes repeated throughout, terrible childish innuendo, slapstick mimicking that of the chuckle brothers, and a script which seemed to be made up as the cast went along, as well as the plot, made this play tedious to watch and compared to their last smash hit which literally had people rolling in the isles, this barely cracked a smile.

Despite this, it could have the makings of an entertaining evening.

Taken back to the drawing board with a big red marker and crossing out all repeated jokes would admittedly leave very little script, but the basic story of magic double act CU Sassoon and Roy de la Rue wanting to regain that big slot in Vegas, the Las Vegas Best Lunchtime Magician, is original and amusing.

Bring in Daphne the duck and you have the most bizarre angle to a magic show you have ever seen.

Great costumes, strong music and a good cast made this show watchable, but with a little more effort and a few new jokes this could be great.

Maybe I’ll go see it again once it’s been tweaked and hopefully produce a rave review, after all these guys are good.

Ducktastic is on at the Newcastle Theatre Royal until 17 September.