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4-B Thursday, Sept. 19, '68 DETROIT FREE PRESS Performers Sparkle but Lights Don't BY HAKVEY TAYLOR Of The Free Press Staff Perhaps the climax of the evening for the people who went to Cobo Arena Tuesday evening for the opening of "Holiday on Ice" happened as they emerged from the hall into a downtown gone happily delirious. All through the performance many had kept their transistors on to see how the Tigers were doing and these knew it was all over. But for those of us who didn't, the celebration was much more exhilirating than anything that had happened on the ice. This was no fault of the performers, who still seem to us the most refreshing company in the ice show field. They were working under a great handicap. The boxcar carrying the eleaborate lighting equipment broke down and didn't make it to town by show time. So they had to depend on perfunctory spotlights and the eerie and rather depressing blue lights that line the edges of the rink. This, of course, diminished the illusion and the glamour and also detracted from the effect of the excellent costumes, BUt the choreography is still bold and ingenious and the individual stars are as competent as ever. We think this company, stressing as it does Kim Cook grace and artistic inventiveness rather than athletic prowess, comes closer to making skating an art than does any other. And, too, the comedy for the most part comes off very well. And the producers don't hesitate to spoof their own "artistic" endeavors?╟÷as when Alfredo Mendoza and Darolyn Prior solemnly execute beautiful gliding steps to Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" and an intruder from the audience stumbles onto the ice and crashes the act. The show opens with an elaborate sequence on New York in the Gay Nineties and ends with a "tribute" to Hollywood. The opening is fine but the closing is tedious. Best spectaculars are ?╓¬'Jungalero", an African fantasy in which the well rounded .Anna Galmarini plays the "cat girl" and Jorge Valle the great white hunter who can't shoot Very well; and "The Gates of Granada" set, of course, to Spanish music. In this one, Ronnie Robertson shows, again that hie Is perhaps Among the really great figure skaters?╟÷not only for his athletic feats but. also for his sensitive feeling for the music. Other good performances were given by, among others, Alice Quessy, Marei Lahgne- bein, Grete Borgen, Juanita Percelly and Tommy Allen. , 14-C?╟÷THE DETROIT NEWS-Wednesday, Sept. 18, 1968 Holiday on Ice Youth takes a spill By A. L. McCLAIN Detroit N?╜wi Amusement Writer Somebody ought to lock up the di- \ rector and let the athjetes out in the I new edition of Holiday on Ice at Cobo \ Arena. Ronnie Robertson, Anna Galmarini, Grete Borgen, Marei Langenbein?╟÷are all imprisoned in the stilted staging of a Hollywood theme that shuts out much of the brightness of the : performers. GRACE AND BEAUTY the athletes have and it comes through in spite of a theme that says, "Remember Hollywood." Well, Hollywood has been dead for 15 years and so will ice shows if they don't update their creeping stagings. For all of its glitter, pageantry, spectacle and costuming, Holiday on Ice is weighted \ down with old ideas that make you suspect there might be an All Landon or Wendell Wilkie button in the house. Young skaters who look about the age to start burning draft cards are doing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" numbers . . . and not very convincingly. Only two songs, "Up, Up and Away" and -> "Sunny," were even slightly contemporary. Fred Astaire is given equal time with Robertson looking slightly silly in top hat and tails on ice skates and so encumbered that he is forced to cover even less ground than a tap dancer. SHIRLEY TEMPLE, Jackie Coogan, Jackie Cooper, Pearl White, Judy Garland, Tarzan, Valentino, Groucho Marx, Ruby Keeler, Al Jolson?╟÷all are resurrected. A reminder of the Jean Harlow period Ice show's Anna Galmarini shows a certain style, but for the most part Holiday on Ice seems to be bringing up old embarrassments. My favorite numbers were the Jungalero, particularly Anna Galmarini as the Cat Girl, and Gates of Granada in which Robertson turned ice skating into high drama as the Prince of La Mancha. The chimps on ice skates we will skip because they are obviously being misled by humans. Visually, Holiday on Iqe is as attractive a show of its kind around, and it has moments of beauty and humor. But ice skates shouldn't squeak with old age.