Dreams, both sleep-induced and wide-awake, are the nominal impetus behind the latest frozen-floored extravaganza from Holiday on Ice. Fantasy is the conceptual hook upon which the artistic director Anthony van Laast and company hang two glossy, glittery acts packed with occasionally crass and usually kitsch escapist spectacle.

The show’s subject-matter actively precludes logic, but allows the design team to run riot. In the first of 13 scenes a pyjama-clad skater tosses and turns in his bed as nearly two dozen umbrella-wielding figures swarm over the ice, soon revealing harlequin-style outfits beneath grey macs. In a schoolroom fantasy a sadistic female teacher is transformed into a big-bottomed lioness, while the students become creatures in a zoo of the imagination. The latter include cute one-person pachyderms and birds with school-tie plumage.

Sometimes you have to wonder just whose fantasy we’re in. A segment billed as Ritual Fire Dance plays like a sulphur-permeated showcase of medieval practices in the black arts. Here the Holiday on Ice stalwarts Fiona Zaldua and Dmitry Sukhanov demonstrate a dazzling partnership via one-armed lifts and whirlwind spins in which she lies securely atop his skull. The two are central to a wonderfully elaborate Bollywood scene featuring gilded, multi-armed deities and muscular embodiments of the elephant-headed Ganesha.

Musically Fantasy is a prerecorded hotch potch of high and low culture, ranging from arrangements of Vivaldi, Holst and Saint-Saëns to loud covers of pop hits. A Parisian café scene, set to a male rendition of an Edith Piaf standard, fulfils the show’s remit. Cast as customers at neighbouring tables who temporarily leave their undesirable partners behind, Nina Ulanova and Martin Simecek enact a smoothly romantic adagio routine.

The men have the edge among the featured skaters. Although competent, their female counterparts tend to lack authoritative finish. The most refined male is Michael Tyllesen, whose elegance is spotlighted in a Piano Man scene. The show also features aerial tricks on circus silks, plus some quick, top-notch illusions courtesy of magic consultant Paul Kieve.

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