February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
In a 90-minute performance that saw him play a Roman emperor, an Irish rebel leader, a high priest, a Chicago gangster and a predatory airline pilot, Flatley showed that his ego is still as big as his bank balance.
The show kicked off impressively as with a lineup of dancers clattering their heels in perfect unison as Roman soldiers.
Act one danced the audience through Irish history from the invasion of the Vikings up to the 1916 Rising. In one scene, a line of British redcoats marched onstage to the booming soundtrack of “Royal Britannia,” providing a powerful contrast to the digital backdrop of green fields and thatched cottages.
As they looted and burned, however, the scene weakened as one toned, writhing beauty after another emerged from a flaming cottage, wearing rags that had worn off their bodies to reveal large amounts of leg and chest in Flatley’s implausible depiction of the Great Famine.
The “Garden of Eden,” scene, where dancers flitted around the stage in flower and insect costumes, was more pre-school play than stadium spectacular. There was even a wasp lurking side-stage, looking like the child who wanted to be the fairy.
At 47, Flatley is twice the age of the oldest dancer in his troupe, but his light-footed antics are still impressive. His performances in this show were as sharp as ever, but there were less of them; at times it seemed as though he was trying to conserve energy.
Having said that, Flatley was the picture of virulence as the second act opened. Donning aviator glasses and a lascivious smile, he led a group of pilots as they surrounded a coquettish-looking Aer Lingus flight attendant and hoisted her up on their shoulders to symbolize a plane flying to New York. Upon landing, she performed a striptease that left her wearing nothing but star-spangled underwear.
In the past, no one has been more successful than Flatley in parading women on stage in skimpy outfits and passing it off as art, but this was gratuitous even for him.
Although lacking sequence of the first act, the second act featured some of the show’s highlights, such as Flatley’s tongue-in-cheek tribute to the gangster history of his native Chicago.
In one impressive sequence, rows of female dancers in trilby hats and pinstriped suits shoes danced, their heels imitating the sound of a machine-gun firing.
“The Celtic Tiger,” excelled when Flatley stuck to that which he does best; precise hard shoe sequences and stripped-down solo performances.
Although hardcore Irish dancing fans might be horrified at the notion of performing a jig to the soundtrack of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the show still demonstrated why Flatley can legitimately call himself the Lord of the Dance.