Lord of the Dance

A troup of immensely talented dancers in a somewhat awkward show left me rather cold.

The story, a basic good (the man with the sparkly belt saying "Lord of the Dance") versus evil (the man with the helmet) tale really doesn't flow - in part because of the insistance on blackouts between scenes which killed the pace and were quite un-necessary. So many of the scenes seemed unrelated to the story that I found it hard to follow - was I meant to?

Like I say, the dancers are clearly very skilled at what they do but this is masked by the fact that the entire show is done to a monotonous and irritating click-track. There was also a lack of connection between the dancers, and between the dancers and their characters which was quite unnerving especially when juxtaposed with the enforced egotistical posturing of the leads.

To be honest, for me, the repeated sections of scantily clad dancers (all tits and teeth as my companion put it) twerking, all be it with some style, felt as out of place for a modern audience as a Minstrel Show would - but given the baying of sections of the audience every time the men took their tops off it might be me that's out of time - either way it did not feel comfortable.

Technically, the lack of front lighting left many dancers with darkened faces and moving in and out of each other's shadows. The jumbo screens distracted a lot and were often more engaging than the dance especially as the sequences were often bizarre; such as the unicorn on a 5 second feeding loop or the flocks of butterflies. One whole section of the displays failed for a while but we didn't miss much.

Sorry, I love dance shows but this really lacked a heart.