Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake 24/01/2010, Sadler's Wells

I entered Sadler's Wells with high expectations. This is a much talked about and almost revered production, made famous by Adam Cooper's cameo at the end of the film Billy Elliott. And while there are undeniably some sublime moments of raw spine-tingling genius, I think Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake has been over-hyped. When it was first staged 15 years ago, it would have been novel in the extreme, but now it is practically more mainstream than many of the ballets at the opera house.

The first act is Swan Lake meets Paris Hilton, and I almost despaired. Dance theatre at it's cheapest, this act was overlong. The spoof 'ballet-within-a-ballet' punches accurately and gets some laughs from the ballet fans in the audience...(although I found myself getting a little indignant at the insinuation that traditional ballets are so ridiculous and trite - what a purist I am!). However, this spoof is basically the only attempt at dancing in the first forty-five minutes. Tedious.

Things pick up dramatically when the Swans appear following the Prince's attempt to commit suicide at the lake. They are a visual feast, and the energy that comes from the all-male cast is palpable. That said, as the choreography is not perhaps the most imaginative in the world, a tighter performance from the Swan ensemble would have vastly improved the performance. The best moments in this second act were undoubtedly the duets between the Swan (Richard Winsor) and the Prince. However, at the interval I felt that what I had seen thus far was basically a pastiche with a couple of hints of genius and nothing more. While Richard Winsor has some stunning arm movements and is clearly a very accomplished actor, at this stage I was still distracted by his surprising lack of instep, spoiling nearly all the lines in Matthew Bourne's choroegraphy.

Fortunately, the second half was far superior to the second (mostly because it didn't include the dire first act). The explosive sexual tension exuded when the Dark Stranger (Richard Winsor) arrives at the party is utterly compelling, as he swaggers around the stage, women swooning, while the Prince looks on in confusion and distress. The scene ends dramatically when the Dark stranger seduces the Queen, the Prince entirely loses the plot and there are gun shots a-plenty.

And then finally we reach the best bit of the night. As the Prince descends into a frenzy of madness and despair, the set suddenly becomes recognisable as the inside of a psychiatric institution of some kind; the enormous bed that we saw at the very beginning  now making a tom-thumb-like child of the whimpering
man buried among the many pillows. The swans suddenly take on their true-to-life (rather than ethereal fairy tale) nature, and aggressively writhe and contort around the Prince's room, tormenting him. The image you are left with is haunting, as the Prince is reunited with The Swan and weeps in his arms. This was great, chilling, psychotic, manic and could only have been done with male swans.

So what did I take home from the night? To me this was not really Swan Lake. The story doesn't much resemble the original, unlike a not dissimilar reworking that I saw done by the Bolshoi a few years ago. This is not necessarily a negative, but it just feels a little bit like Matthew Bourne wanted the male swans, so needed to somehow fit them into the framework of Swan Lake (cynical - perhaps to draw in the crowds?). There are too many different elements in one show - cheap 'Hairspray'-like dance theatre, coupled with chilling contemporary dance, and a dose of pastiche and satire. It clearly does it for some people, but as a whole production, doesn't work for me. I think I'll take the original Swan Lake, and remember this as some kind of interesting yet imperfect aberration.