Thom Tuck Goes Straight to DVD

It’s hard to believe that this genuinely is the real Thom Tuck who stands before us. In a fusty jacket and clutching a glass of red wine like it’s the arm of a girl who’s about to leave him, he looks like a youngish am-dram hopeful embarking on a one-hander about some bitter old divorcee. Instead he does a one-man show about watching every Disney film that went straight to DVD. 

Tuck is best known as one third of sketch troupe the Penny Dreadfuls, and while the premise of his first solo show has clearly attracted a good few fans of, say, the Lion King trilogy (yep, turns out there were three of them) his diffident manner is clearly off-putting for some. One chap spends practically the whole show with his head in his hands, bizarrely.

Most are won over early on, though, as it swiftly becomes clear what a rich vein Tuck has tapped into here, and that his slight pomposity adds a whole extra layer of unearned gravitas to these hilariously daft, often clearly dreadful films. Imagine if Peter Ustinov was an enormous fan of the Black Eyed Peas, but only their b-sides. It's a lot like that.

The Disney angle is only one strand of this surprisingly textured show; in fact, as Tuck offsets the whys and wherefores of Walt’s lesser works with scenes from his own undistinguished love life, and the two eventually conjoin for a hugely satisfying finale. Unlike the denouement of Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata. Really, what were they thinking?