Sleep­ing Beau­ty on Ice plays at the St James until the 5th July.Part of a world­wide tour by the Impe­r­i­al Ice Stars, a group con­sist­ing of actu­al skat­ing heroes. It is based on the bal­let set to Tchaikovsky’s tunes. I’m pret­ty con­vinced all bal­let should actu­al­ly be per­formed on iceskates, an opin­ion formed in the heady days of Torvill and Dean per­form­ing at Hagley Park in 1984.

The show began with the won­der­ful pro­logue in Carabosse’s lair. It was a bit like Rocky Hor­ror Show on ice, with the evil min­ions sinewy move­ments giv­ing the audi­ence no doubt that all that sex­i­ness was evil. Sleeping Beauty

Mov­ing on the First Act is large­ly set in the roy­al court and involves lots of fan­cy skat­ing and pret­ty frocks, hand­some fel­las and dis­plays of ath­leti­cism that left me breath­less. These skaters are so accom­plished it feels total­ly out of whack to see them per­form­ing here. There are some snazzy MJ moves snuck in, so keep your eyes on that King.

The Sec­ond Act is where I became com­plete­ly entranced, there is aer­i­al work, fire, hunt­ing dudes, owls. Some­thing for every­one. The hand­some prince is hand­some and Princess Auro­ra (Sleep­ing Beau­ty) love­ly. At the con­clu­sion of the show as part of the bows each of the skaters took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show of some of their finest skills, much to the audience’s delight.

The demo­graph­ic of the crowd was approx­i­mate­ly 60 years old­er than I’d expect­ed, and very appre­cia­tive they were. I took my 6 year old and it was right up her alley. I dare­say if you like a bit of kitsch, roman­tic, ath­let­ic fun you’d enjoy this. And to be hon­est, the nov­el­ty of peo­ple iceskat­ing on the stage at the St James is worth the trip alone.