Review: Beauty and The Beast on Ice
Venue: Palace Theatre
Date Reviewed: 19th June, 2008
Beauty and the Beast is a fairytale that is becoming increasingly popular with production companies. In recent years Birmingham Royal Ballet have presented a production and currently the Disney musical version appears to be on a never ending tour of the country.
Added to this, increasing numbers of pantomime stagings are cropping up each festive season and now the Russian Ice Stars are approaching the end of their latest UK tour with this excellent adaptation of the tale which deserved a fuller theatre than it got in this oversaturated market.
The basic tale of Beauty (Belle), danced by Irina Tkachuk, and the Beast, danced by the extremely tall Andrey Chuvilyaev is well known and tells of the selfish prince who is transformed by an enchantress into a hideous Beast and must earn someone’s love in order to redeem himself and return his castle of strange creatures to their original glorious state.
A voice-over/narrator whose prologue sounds remarkably similar to the prologue of the Disney musical ensures that the audience fully understand the action in each compartmentalised scene. This isn’t, however, altogether necessary as Giuseppe Arena’s energetic choreography provides clarity to the action whilst also ensuring the skaters are given scope to wow the audience with acrobatics and some unbelievable lifts.
The original music score by Silvio Amato is evocative of the sense and style of each scene and is very pleasing to the ear but every piece ends ever so abruptly. More satisfaction would be gained if the composer structured in a much greater dynamic variety and more structured endings. But this is a minor criticism of what is, essentially, a decent score.
Perry Scenic’s set is effective in its simplicity and the story book backdrop where the pages turn to reveal the backing for each scene is particularly successful. Likewise, Licia Furieri’s colourful costumes compliment these backdrops and together they are reminiscent of a pantomimic style.
It’s difficult to pin point particular performers who shine as the whole company are of the highest standard. However, deserving of a mention is Dimitry Naumkin as Belle’s brother and Valdis Mintals as the family friend who also doubles as the handsome prince following the somewhat sudden and lacklustre transformation scene (my one major quibble). Both skaters show a flair for comedy demonstrating what good all rounders they are.
The ensemble skating is slick and the company clearly enjoy making full use of the huge Palace Theatre stage, and these Russian Ice Stars are deserving of their name, as they are, without a doubt, stars!
-Malcolm Wallace