Reviews & Press Clippings

SLEEPING Beauty on Ice exploded onto the stage in Pretoria’s State Theatre with a breath-taking stage production that is simply fabulous, world-class artistry. It is a brilliant mix of speed and skill, elegance and fantasy, ballet and sport, giving a new spin to an old chestnut.

Producer and impresario Pieter Toerien has teamed up with Australia’s Lunchtime Productions to bring this event to SA. The show’s director, Tony Mercer, has been designing ice shows for 10 years. The stars of the Imperial Ice Stars are Russian, except for leading lady Mandy Woetzel from Germany, and include 23 Olympic, World, European and national championship skaters who between them have won more than 210 competition medals. The production details are formidable; the 40 company members include a doctor, there are 110 costumes, and technicians to handle the creation of an artificial ice rink on the stage, using 16km of refrigeration pipes — a rink that uses 14 tons of ice and takes 140 man hours to build.

While the performers are all skaters, the rehearsal director, Vladimir Uliyanov, has a background in ballet, and this shows in their graceful placement. It is not only the soloists who are stunning; there’s no weak link in the rest of the cast.
They use Tchaikovsky’s music and the broad structure of the Petipa ballet, with a couple of nods in the direction of original choreography. But it is not a slavish mimic, and this production avoids the Beauty greats — the Rosa adagio, for one, and the final divertissements (Bluebird, Red Riding Hood) have been dropped. Instead, the story focuses on the battle between good and evil, the wicked fairy Carabosse and the good Lilac Fairy (Olga Sharourenko) who outperform the Princess Aurora (Mandy Woetzel).

The extended overture sets the tone in the dark forest home of the black fairy and her minions. Costumes (by Natella Abdulaeva) are lavish, despite some odd headgear; sets by Eamon D’Arcy (he designed the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games opening ceremony) are atmospheric — gauze veils for the cobwebbed woods, a painted courtroom scene.

Aerial stunts, and skating on stilts are just some of the extras that showcase the quite extraordinary talents of these young skaters who move so fast that the ice is barely visible.

If you want a real pre-Christmas treat, suitable for adults and children, balletomanes and skating fans, this is it.

The Pretoria run ends on November 6 and it moves to Artscape Opera Cape Town from November 21 to December 10.

Booking at Computicket.