Daily Telegraph, Australia
By Troy Lennon
Like every English schoolboy, Tony Mercer, director of Swan Lake on Ice, once dreamed of being a professional footballer. "But my dream was curtailed at a very early age when I was only 18 years old and I broke my leg," he says. Once that healed, he returned to the game -and had four fingers broken.
"I thought, somebody's telling me something," he says. So, he opted for showbusiness. It might seem like a strange background for a director of an ice-skating adaptation of a ballet, but Mercer believes his years of theatre experience combined with his brief time as a footballer give him a better understanding of what skaters go through.
"The skaters are all from sport, there are none from a ballet background. I think it helps that I understand what their bodies can do and their sporting mentality," he says.
Instead of basing it on ballet choreography, Mercer says the first point of reference is the music. "Tchaikovsky is great to skate to." he adds. What Mercer promises is an ice-skating spectacular set to beautiful music and faithful to the original story.
"On ice" used to mean kitsch children's entertainment, but the Imperial Ice Stars give the tag a stamp of class. An elegant, exciting and near-faithful adaptation of the muchloved ballet, it puts the skaters' great skills just ahead of the integrity of the old story. The cast is simply superb.
The wizard Rothbart (Anton Klykov) was a commanding presence and managed some of the most spectacular tricks in the show. They messed with the ending to make it a bit happier, but it's not the first time this beloved story has been slightly modified. A great night out for the family.