Ducktastic!

How time flies....or rather how ducks fly! Seven years ago I started rehearsals for Ducktastic in the West End directed by the amazingly talented Sir Kenneth Branagh. The stars of the show, Sean Foley and Hamish McColl shared the spotlight with Daphne the Duck. In fact there were a total of 40 ducks in the cast. Real ducks! The play followed two under-achieving magicians who'd lost their licence to work with big animals and had to resort to performing with ducks. The ducks were handled by Dave Souza, who built his reputation training owls for the Harry Potter movies (I suspect it was a bit of a come-down teaching ducks to tread the boards).

I played the part of the magicians hostess. My character was required to do a magic trick that wouldn't look out of place in a top Vegas show. I had to climb into a glass box looking all glam, curtains were dropped on the sides of the glass box to hide me. Once the curtains were dropped I had to contort myself into the smallest hole hidden underneath the box after which a false roof was lowered down on top of me to reveal 10 quacking ducks. The curtains were then raised. From the audiences point of view it looked like I'd been turned into 10 ducks. It was a great trick.......when it went well! I recall on one occasion the technicians couldn't get the false roof to go back up and I was trapped. I screamed and screamed for them to let me out as I couldn't breathe properly, but their only concern was harming the ducks. I wasn't very happy. The fact that there could have been a dead actress lying in the bottom of the box didn't seem to bother them at all! Animals and birds come first didn't you know that???