Duck!

Published Wednesday 12 December 2007 at 12:55 by Matthew Hemley

Anyone looking for a Christmas production that will entertain both adults and children need look no further than the Unicorn Theatre’s production of Duck!, by Philip Osment. The show is a reworking of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Ugly Ducking and the cast bring Osment’s excellent script to life superbly, with most of them required to tackle at least three characters each. Such is the quality of their performances they are able to make each character completely different from the last, sometimes so convincingly you would think the cast was made up of more than just seven actors.

Inika Leigh Wright sets the standard high when she first appears as Mother Duck, waddling onto the stage using simple but effective hand movements and small turns of the head to represent a duck. She is soon joined by Adam Baxter, Gbemisola Ikumelo and Richard Sumitro, who play her ducklings to great comic effect, while Hazel Maycock is brilliant as the pompous Older Duck who has allusions of grandeur. All five go on to play the likes of swans, foxes, crows, cats and dogs. The cast are brilliant at bringing out the different animal traits both vocally and physically, with Baxter’s cat a pleasure to behold and Wright’s crow perfectly capturing the bullying nature of the bird.

The pair also play human siblings Alice and Zach, excellently conveying child-like innocence and vulnerability, while Ikumelo and Sumitro provide one of the show’s highlights as geese Gan and Der. John O’Mahony switches with ease between a homeless man and a number of animals and Liam Lane is perfect as the awkward cygnet who finds himself rejected by his siblings. First appearing with a clumsy waddle, wide eyes and contorted features, Lane’s transformation into a beautiful swan is lovely to watch and the man who first appeared at the beginning of the show is barely recognisable by the end.

All in all, the show, directed by Rosamunde Hutt, provides a wonderful evening’s entertainment. The production is witty, humorous, touching and a treat from start to finish.