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Despite having first been produced over ten years ago, Matthew Bourne's interpretation of this classic story is still very much a Swan Lake for our times. The story has been completely revised and updated and is consequently very different from any 'traditional' production you may have seen. Nor have those intervening years detracted in any way from its freshness and powerful impact.
The story opens with a young Prince tossing and turning in his bed, tormented by nightmares of an imposing swan. His mother enters, he reaches out to her but she is aloof and gives him no comfort. Next it is morning, the Prince is awakened and dressed and made ready by his retinue of servants. With the Queen, he then embarks on a seemingly endless round of official duties - grand openings, unveilings, christenings of ships etc. But the Prince is unhappy, he is alone and unloved. His Private Secretary takes advantage of the Prince's vulnerability by setting him up with a girl. The Prince is very much taken with the girl, despite his mother's disapproval since she is a commoner. The girlfriend accompanies the Prince and Queen to a ballet performance where she further fires the Queen's disapproval with her brash behaviour. Later that evening the Prince is roaming the streets. He finds his new girlfriend dancing in a seedy club. She will not come with him and, manipulated by the Private Secretary, he gets drunk ending up in the gutter outside, providing copy for the paperazzi.
The second Act (following on without a pause) sees the Prince in despair, rushing of to the lake and leaving a suicide note as he prepares to drown himself. He is saved, however, by a single male swan which emerges from the water - the first creature in his life to offer him solace. Other swans enter the scene but when they begin to close in menacingly on the Prince the but the first swan controls them and protects him. As the act closes the prince has forgotten his despair. He tears up the suicide note and rushes home.
The third act opens as guests are arriving at a Royal Ball. The Queen is throwing the Ball to introduce the Prince to various elligible Princesses. The Prince's girlfriend is there but he repeatedly turns her away. Next, a myterious dark stranger appears. He appears to take the women under his thrall, including the Queen. The Prince himself is also strongly attracted to this man who so strangely reminds him of his swan. The stranger dances with the Prince's girlfriend fuelling his jealousy, but of whom. The room empties, the stranger torments the prince before disappearing just as the revellers return to find the Prince struggling with an unseen adversary. Made a laughing stock, the Prince rushes away. He returns later brandishing a gun. When he points the gun at the Queen the girlfriend rushes forward to intervene and in the general commotion that follows shots are fired. The Prince and his girlfriend collapse to the ground, but it is the girl who has been killed. The Prince is dragged away to a sanitorium.
At the climax we see the Prince returned to the Palace alone in his bed. The swans invade his dreams tormenting him. After they depart the lone swan appears, but it is injured, in pain. The rest of the flock return, they attack the Prince, surrounding him. His swan drives them back, hissing and beating its wings. But it is weakened by its injuries, and when the rest surround it they drive it down and kill it. The Prince, feeling his very soul has been destroyed, dies of despair. His mother finds his body, for the first time she acts with tenderness towards him now when it is too late. But for the Prince at least his torment is over. He has at last found peace, united forever with his swan.
Swan Lake without Odette and Odile? With an all male swan ensemble? What a ridiculous idea! How could that ever possibly work? Clearly Matthew Bourne has the answer because work it does, magnificently so. The secret to the male ensemble lies in changing the very nature of the Swans, making them more birdlike in their movements and making their temperament more akin to the real thing. He doesn't discard the graceful elegance of movement, just stirs in a large cupful of long-necked, bad-tempered psychopathy. The result? If you think all ballet is pointless and boring you have not seen Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. If you have never had your heart floated among the clouds then dashed to the ground in an instant you have not seen Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. The more astute among you may be beginning to suspect by now that I kind of liked this show. What can I say, this was glorious entertainment.
I have read reviews of previous performances in which the writer's claimed that Matthew Bourne's story is about the Prince's road to the discovery, and ultimate celebration, of his homosexuality. They conclude that his unhappiness earlier in the story is due to the crisis in his sexual identity. That is one possible interpretation certainly, but not I think the one that was intended and in fact one which I think rather misses the point. It is not about love of a sexual nature at all. As such, gender, race, even species are totally irrelevant. It is about the need to be loved, and in particular about the harm that follows when that need is unfulfilled. The fact that the swan is male is, if anything, used as counterpoint to illustrate this fact.
The standard of the dancing was of the highest calibre throughout, with many comic elements. There was however, very little use of pointe shoes for the female dancers. In fact this was restricted entirely to the parody where the Queen, the Prince and the girlfriend are at the theatre watching a ballet. This in itself was wonderfully done. However the image that persists most strongly in the mind is of the swans, dressed in puffed out feathery britches with bare chests above and bare feet below.
With a rotating cast and no cast sheet on the night I had to identify the performers from the photo's in the programme. Consequently, whilst not 100% certain, I am at least reasonably confident that the following are correct.
Neil Penlington played the pampered but neurotic Prince with some panache. The early scene where he climbed out of bed down a flight of stairs made from the backs of his servants was a delight and set the bar for the sense of fun that the production maintained throughout. Most of the time he called upon to play the weakling, used, mocked and betrayed by those around him. Counterpoint to this is his first meeting with the swans from which he emerges vigorous, triumphant, truly alive for the first time. Jason Piper as the Swan was the star of the show. From the moment he bounded on, his performance was magnetic. As the swan he blended energy with precision of movement wherein every pose and and gesture told a story. As the Stranger he was mezmeric and dangerous, imposing his will on everyone around him. Isabel Mortimer as The Queen with a penchant for toyboys played the role with an air of aloofness that was not so much icy as self-assured and indifferent. Leigh Daniels as the dizzy somewhat boorish girlfriend played the part superbly. Her mannerisms and facial expressions made her character, around whom much of the humour revolved, emminently believable. The funniest moments came when her mobile phone rang in the scene at the ballet she answered it clearly mouthing the words "I'm at the theatre", and in the same scene when she dropped her purse and tried to climb out of the box to retreive it. Alan Mosley as the scheming Private Secretary was masterfully Machiovellian. Last but not least the ensemble of swans were sensational.
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is to ballet what Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore is to high opera. Funny, entertaining, magnificent! Tchaikovsky's great musical score deserved nothing less than first class choregraphy, it was not let down.