So where do we begin with Ducktastic? It’s a new play written by the guys who wrote The Play What I Wrote about Morecombe and Wise. It revolves around someone who was previously “the biggest breakfast time magician on the Vegas strip” and who performs magic with a duck flavour (not in the Chinese “duck” sense, since the birds at this performance are, for the most part, alive).
Incorporated into the play are audience participation moments that actually scared me stupid since my free ticket, courtesy of some rubber ducks found floating in a fountain in Leicester Square on Monday morning, saw me seated in the front row.
We then end up in a world of stage magic and a duck called Daphne who might actually be able to do real magic. There’s a romance blossoming between a theatre late-comer and one of the ushers.
There are puns aplenty, and corny jokes that make you wince rather than laugh.
And there are songs – they finish on the big glitzy number “Duck Knows”.
All in all it makes for one of the strangest evenings in the West End I’ve ever had. They’re still in preview, so with luck some of the jokes can be tied down a bit more, since they don’t “hit” quite as much as they might, but I’m not complaining that much.