Sunday 30 August 2009

Fringe Review - Peter Duncan's Daft and Dangerous #edfringe

Pleasance Beyond 18:30

Yes Blue Peter's Peter Duncan is on the fringe with his Daft and Dangerous show. He's is doing a self deprecating look back over his whole career from his first nude appearance on the cover of a baby's knitting pattern. It is a real cabaret performance with audience participation. He mixes, humour, song, a Blue Peter make, pantomime, video playbacks and his tightrope skills learnt for playing Barnum.

Even seeing as it is a one man show, ok with interaction from his tech guy and pianist, he also uses the screen to interact with Brain Cant and Andy Hamilton, as God and the Devil. The reminiscences are some that all of us can share to differing degrees. Last night, and probably most nights, my audience shouted out 'Not that One' when Peter's scene from Flash popped up on screen.

As well as doing his own career he does an excellent transformation into Charlie Chaplin's little tramp, the star of cabaret discovering the character who would make his big, and a song sung as the late Danny La Rue about the plot of musicals.

But this is an hilarious rump and one where the talent is sweating because he is still an action man. It also may have been advisable for Richard Bacon to watch his fellow former Blue Peter presenter before doing his 10 minutes of stand up, because Peter did not have a silent room. Even we he is singing and walking the tightrope for his Grand Finale.

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