A Strong Case for ‘Happily Hercules’

Don’t fooled be by those Disney on Ice advertisements, the ones emblazoned with Minnie and Mickey heading up a follies-like line of prancing Disney characters. This is no simple mice-on-ice show.

The famous characters and assorted pals do appear. More about that later. The heart of the two-hour Disney on Ice’s “Happily Ever After” show that opened Christmas Day at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim is a flashy, fun and athletic retelling of Disney’s Hercules.

“Happily Ever After” is just what an ice show should be--part theater, part Vegas spectacle, part Mardi Gras and lots of great skating wrapped in gobs of glittery costumes, kid-pleasing special effects and pyrotechnics.

This newest ice production from Feld Entertainment, parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, will satisfy some of that current appetite for figure-skating exhibitions, while entertaining families with one of Disney’s wittier movie scripts.

If you liked the Disney movie version of “Hercules,” you’ll enjoy the ice one too. The creators play the dialogue and music straight from the film, so you again get to hear James Woods as a perfectly wicked Hades and the music of Academy Award-winning composer Alan Menken.

And while the music and voices pour out of the Pond’s solid sound system, an international cast of 40 figure skaters acts out--skates out?--the characters. The young Hercules, temporarily displaced from Mount Olympus, is played by Besa Tsintsadze, a 134-pound blaze of a figure skater from Tbilisi, Georgia, and winner of the 1992 Russian Nationals.

A hunky and mature version of Hercules, who later captures the heart of Megara, the temptress with the heart of gold, is played by Troy Goldstein, who has won gold medals in all five U.S. Figure Skating Assn. categories.

The audience is treated to the spectacle of a five-ton Mount Olympus rising 25 feet, Zeus’ thunderbolts, an animatronic Hydra, a collection of Greek monsters and Titans who rumble across the ice in huge body costumes, and an eerie and beautifully choreographed number when Meg falls into the depths of Hades.

With all this going on, who needs a perfunctory visit by a handful of other famous Disney lovebirds? Before the Hercules production begins, Aladdin and Jasmine and Snow White and her Prince and Belle and Beast are trotted out to introduce the show’s theme: love stories with happy endings. Minnie and Mickey join the lot in a romantic waltz, “So This Is Love?”

This feels like a stretch, a device to give die-hard Disney fans--especially young girls--a Belle-Snow White-Jasmine sighting. OK, we won’t begrudge the kids that. But leave the ending to Herc and company.

Just as the audience is soaking up the final moments of the Hercules finale, with fireworks, music and ice fog pouring out, here come those non-sequiturs: Belle, Snow White and Jasmine and beaus, like runaways from the Main Street parade across town.

A happy ending? Almost.

* Disney on Ice “Happily Ever After, Featuring Hercules,” Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, 2695 E. Katella Ave. 1 p.m. Tuesday, 1 and 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, 1 p.m. Thursday; 1, 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Friday, noon, 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 1 and 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Continues Jan. 6-10 at Los Angeles Sports Arena and Jan. 14-18 at the Long Beach Arena. Tickets, from $11.50 to $30, are available at arena box offices or Ticketmaster. Children under 12 save $2.50 on select shows. Box offices: (714) 704-2500, Anaheim; 213-748-6131, Los Angeles; 562-436-3661, Long Beach. A Spanish-language performance is scheduled Jan. 10 at 1 p.m. at the Los Angeles arena.