CityLife

Lord Of The Dance @ Opera House

IT cost the historic Opera House theatre half-a-million pounds to get refurbished over the summer and, when it re-opened last night with Michael Flatley's hugely successful Lord Of The Dance show, they'd obviously had the luck of the Irish - all the new seats were green!

"That's just coincidence," laughed a spokeswoman.

"We simply wanted them all to finally match and be comfortable to sit on!"

The refurbished theatre is one of Manchester's most historic, having first opened on Boxing Day, 1912 (when it was known as The New Theatre) before becoming The New Queens Theatre in 1915.

But it wasn't until the famous promoter Sir Thomas Beecham started promoting his Beecham Opera Company there in 1916 - ignoring complaints that "Grand Opera was the wrong side of Deansgate, for the right sort of people" - that the venue became successful.

It was so successful, in fact, that during the 1919 season, one-tenth of the entire population of Manchester attended a Beecham performance.

With this in mind - although perhaps not those sort of attendance figures! - the venue's brand-new bar is called the Beecham Bar.

The extensive overhaul also involves new carpeting while, at long last, patrons in the Gallery seats can actually find them from the inside of the theatre rather than having to climb many flights of draughty stairs from the outside.

Flatley

Even though Flatley himself retired from dancing in 2001, Lord Of The Dance, the show the former Riverdance star devised, wrote and produced in 1996, is now established as a bona-fide phenomenon and the biggest grossing dance show in the world.

It has played to over 50 million people on every single continent, selling a staggering $400m worth of tickets across the globe. But anyone who saw those historic premiere shows in Dublin in 1996 or subsequent sellout performances at the Manchester Evening News Arena and other local venues may well have been disappointed by last night's show.

Although the ensemble work was rousing and the show's good girl/bad girl dynamic of Saoirse, The Irish Colleen (Bernadette Flynn) and Morrighan, The Temptress (Kelly Hendry) impressed, the show stumbled over a couple of fundamental flaws.

Firstly, there was the pre-recorded music, which was simply never going to offer the thrill of hearing live musicians performing alongside the still-dazzling dancework.

More unfortunately, The Lord Of The Dance himself, performed by Des Bailey, was a distinctly uncharismatic character.

His exhortations to the crowd to clap along didn't help matters, either, putting one more in mind of a Pop Idol wannabe than a mythological figure protecting his mythical people.

Nonetheless, if the enthusiastic audience reaction last night was anything to go by, then it's going to be a long, long time before this particular Irish success story is finally forced to hang up its dancing shoes.

Lord Of The Dance is at the Opera House until Sunday, September 28. Ticket prices range from £18 to £26. Call the Box Office on 0870 060 1768 or click here to book online.