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.