Culture Magazine, Sunday Times
By David Dougill
The Imperial Ice Stars, a rather grandly named company of 23 (mostly Russian) figure-skating champions, are touring the UK until May with an ambitious production, Sleeping Beauty on Ice. Three factors mark this out from your usual ice spectacular. First is the high standard of the troupe; second, this is an ice ballet telling the story along the lines of the dance version and using Tchaikovsky’s music (recorded). Third, it takes place in traditional proscenium theatres. Last week, it came to Sadler’s Wells, which, although we have seen several watery events there, has never before had its stage covered in ice.
Skaters, with all their build-up of speed, sometimes need to cover more ground than is actually available, so we are conscious that everybody is almost constantly going round in circles: the more varied patterns available to ballet dancers are missed. The choreo-graphy, by the Olympic coach Tatiana Tarasova, is efficient and often pretty, especially for the ensembles and for the neatly differentiated solos of the gift fairies.
Characterisation is uneven in Tony Mercer’s production. The king and queen are ciphers, while the “black fairy”, Carabosse, could hardly be more in your face. Maria Borovikova, grimacing and teeth-gnashing, plays the role with huge gusto — even flying on a wire. But the most egregious scene-hogger is Anton Klykov as the court chamberlain, Catala-butte, a mincing comedian who is constantly erupting in corkscrew spins and cartwheels, shamelessly mugging at the audience. He is a virtuoso, but this shouldn’t be the most prominent role. (Someone sitting near me cried: “Buttons was terrific.”) At one point, we get a mini- divertissement of butterflies and bluebirds. Most startling is Yulia Krasinskaya’s butterfly, who skates — even spins — on stilts. This is to a passage from the Pathétique symphony: Tchaikovsky’s ballet score apparently did not fully satisfy the producer’s needs. The music is arbitrarily edited and we have a voice-over narration (by the actor Bill Kerr), when there should be no need of this at all.