So I took Paul and the outlaws to the ballet for the first time in their lives last night, to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. Arguably not the best choice for a first ballet, but hey, you win some, you lose some. And to be fair, they all said they really liked it.
I am torn. It was moving. For much of today, I found it haunting. I couldn’t get it out of my head – not the good bits and not the bad bits.
Let’s start with the good bits. The promotional poster said it would change the way I saw ballet forever, and the more I think about that the more I realise that it’s true. In some ways this was a lot closer to, say, Zen Zen Zo than the State Opera House in Vienna. And in those ways is was damn good. The choreography was spectacular. The men – let’s admit to this up front – were beautiful. It did in no way suffer from the absence of swan maidens, and I suspect I might find it an interesting and in some ways difficult experience to watch a more traditional production again – though I plan to.
My biggest problem comes from the story-telling. The plot is far from tight. Superfulous elements already start in Act 1 with the silly ballet within a ballet, and the seedy club. Act 2, beautiful and full of hot swan-men though it is, dragged on just a touch too long. When I’m being distracted from the characters and the amazing dancing by looking at my watch, thinking “When does the story move on?” something’s wrong. Act 3 similarly rather overstated the point. The only act that was really and truly tight in terms of story-telling was the last one.
What’s worse is that the plot doesn’t make sense. In the original, a lot of the tragedy comes from the fact that there is a connection between Odette and Odile, and a driving force/villain in the form of Odile father the mage. In Matthew Bourne’s version there is no obvious connection between the Swan and the Stranger. The latter is just some guy who gate-crashes a party.
Even a more charitable interpretation of the Stranger being the Swan but rejecting the Prince in public as he is not comfortable with his sexuality is problematic. The first interpretation leaves us with the Prince falling for some random straight guy who happens to look like his lover (cliché anyone?), while the latter is an even bigger cliché of the gay guy in the closet beating up his boyfriend to show off how not-gay he is. All three of the gay couples currently on German soap operas started out that way (don’t ask). Add to this the Prince’s absent (dead?) father and domineering, distant and slightly slutty mother (you keeping count of the clichés?) and you end up with something that may have been striking and original in terms of plot in 1995 but really doesn’t quite cut it in 2010.
Having said that, the choreography and basic idea do remain striking and original, and my problems are of an implementational nature only. I do not regret having seen the production, and probably wouldn’t require much talking-into seeing it again.