Torvill & Dean: Our Last Dance – Wembley Arena – Friday 11th April 2025

(Rated 5/5) For completeness – though I’ve already shared my pics and videos taken at the show personally - I’m going to do a review of Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s ‘Our Last Dance’ Tour opening night, but I’m not planning to rate or judge it in any way as such. That said, I suppose if I did, I could say: Artistic Impression & Heart J&C: 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0 Technical Merit OAP standard & Head J&C: 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0 See, I just can’t do anything less, even though technically and inevitably Jayne & Chris at 67 and 66 can’t possibly match up to themselves at 27 and 26 at the height of their performing glory. Maybe it would be fairer to rate the other, and much younger, performers, but I don’t have the ice dance knowledge or observation skills to rate them in any other way than to see they were all excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed the show!

Their Last Dance opened with a performance to ‘The Greatest Showman’ involving, and introducing us to, the entire cast. Then Jayne & Chris welcomed and thanked us before they illustrated their first meeting 50 years ago with Karen Barber as their trainer Betty Callaway and two youngsters, (Isla Forsyth & Lewis Macdonald or Darcy Walshaw & Hugo Brooks) playing them.

From then on, they guided us through their ice dance journey, including searching for music for their routines in a Nottingham library and then performing adapted routines to all their iconic numbers including Mack & Mabel, Barnum (with a little video of Michael Crawford, who called Betty Callaway Frank 😉), Face The Music and so appropriately ending with The Olympic Gold winning Bolero. There were lovely anecdotes – including a sketch with Mr Bean (Torvill&Bean) and meeting Queen Elizabeth II AND the Corgis - via a mixture of chat on screen and on the ice. Amongst all that a plethora of superb routines – choreographed by Chris, Jayne and Dan Whiston from ‘Dancing on Ice’ – and performed by the entire cast. Also, from the DOI family Vanessa Bauer, Andy Buchanan, Annette Dytrt, Mark Hanreity, Vanesa James, Robin Johnstone, Tim Koleto, Misato Komatsubara, Sylvain Longchambon, Mirai Nagasu, Eric Radford, Lukasz Rozycki and Alexandra Schauman. Through their beautiful ice-dancing skills, we were also introduced to stars of the future Phebe Bekker & James Hernandez and Anastasia Vaipan-Law & Luke Digby.

The plan had been to retire 30 odd years ago, but they kept getting asked back to do a multitude of different projects including DOI, which got its own comedy performance sketch live on the ice and snapshots of its celebrity falls and challenges together with the winners over the years on screen.

I shared the whole fabulous experience with my SFAM and her sister, which made it additionally fun and such a treasured memory for we three, connected also by our Bolero-purple pens 😉 I wore my ‘Face The Music’ 1994 tour T-shirt and bought a ‘Last Dance’ bag – back in the 90s I’d be collecting show T-shirts and now bags are more my merch of choice 😉

It was an exceptionally moving, personal interaction between them and us, the audience, and felt additionally special to be at their opening night. Such a wonderful way of connecting and sharing and reminiscing over all those exceptionally iconic golden memories.

Jayne & Chris, you wanted to thank us… well we want to thank you ever so much for all the amazing, beautiful, exciting and wondrous experiences you have given to us over 50 years and praise you for your extraordinary achievements. I feel a lot of love and pride for you both. Wishing you a wonderful retirement from your ice skates, and I for one will keep watching all the lovely videos of you performing in them over and over.

P.S. Anita Dobson, we didn’t mean to be following you to meet Jayne&Chris – we just thought you were leading us to the way out… honest lol 😉 Torvill&DeanLastDance – Review by TheRestrictedReviewer © 2025