On 15th March 2014, I went to see a performance of Matthew Bourne’s ballet, Swan Lake, at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. Matthew Bourne’s adaptation has a male swan, rather than the usual female, which makes for a unique telling of the tale.
At first, I struggled to understand what was going on in the story, as it took me a while to get the hang of interpreting the story from the dance steps, without the guidance of words as I am used to. However, the graceful ballet steps worked in conjunction with more ordinary stage directions, and from this helped me make the transition from confused spectator to engaged audience-member.
The sets and use of the stage were especially well done, particularly for the scene where the queen, the prince, and his girlfriend went to the ballet. The characters left stage right and appeared again on the balcony above the audience, where they sat to watch the ballet that their subjects had put on. It was a little difficult to follow what was happening on the stage and on the balcony at the same time; however, I found this the most interesting part of the story because it was a particularly lively performance from the ‘fictional’ ballet troupe, and because of the obvious, though wordless, conflict in the balcony between the elegant queen and the prince’s enthusiastic but somewhat gauche new girlfriend.
Another effective use of their sets was in the first and last scenes of the performance. At the beginning, the prince is asleep in his enormous bed, tossing and turning in a bad dream, while above the headboard the swan is flying. In the final scene, the queen finds her son slumped across his bed, dead, and again above the headboard the swan appears, this time cradling the prince in his arms. This was a striking image that was still in my mind long after I’d left the theatre.
I must admit that my only prior knowledge of Swan Lake has been gleaned from New Line Cinema’s animated film The Swan Princess, which I watched as child. I was therefore very surprised to find that the characters did not have a happy ending! I was also a little disappointed that there wasn’t a gracefully choreographed battle with an evil sorcerer. However, had I researched the actual story before I went these naïve expectations wouldn’t have had to be undermined, and I may have understood the story a little better from the beginning. By far the most shocking difference, though, between The Swan Princess and Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is the character of the prince: in The Swan Princess he is sometimes rude and disrespectful to his mother, but in Swan Lake he is downright violent, even seizing her and throwing her to the floor in one scene. This change made me somewhat uncomfortable, but it did not detract from my enjoyment of the performance – even the scene where he fights with his mother is beautifully executed, each move elegant, athletic, but tightly controlled so that in reality no one was hurt.
In my opinion, the star of the show was Carrie Johnson, who played the prince’s girlfriend. As a dancer, she was perfect: graceful and talented. As an actress, she was engaging, bringing to life what could have been a vapid and irritating character with energy and humour. Johnson herself seemed to love being a ballet dancer – where others showed strain from the effort of continuous dancing, she maintained a brilliant smile that added to her overall charisma and made her a pleasure to watch.
Overall, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake was an excellent performance and adaptation. Although I had some issues interpreting the story from the dancing, and with the differences to my childhood memories of another adaptation, these are issues that I brought with me to the performance, and they did not stop me from enjoying the show or detract from the experience in any way.
At first, I struggled to understand what was going on in the story, as it took me a while to get the hang of interpreting the story from the dance steps, without the guidance of words as I am used to. However, the graceful ballet steps worked in conjunction with more ordinary stage directions, and from this helped me make the transition from confused spectator to engaged audience-member.
The sets and use of the stage were especially well done, particularly for the scene where the queen, the prince, and his girlfriend went to the ballet. The characters left stage right and appeared again on the balcony above the audience, where they sat to watch the ballet that their subjects had put on. It was a little difficult to follow what was happening on the stage and on the balcony at the same time; however, I found this the most interesting part of the story because it was a particularly lively performance from the ‘fictional’ ballet troupe, and because of the obvious, though wordless, conflict in the balcony between the elegant queen and the prince’s enthusiastic but somewhat gauche new girlfriend.
Another effective use of their sets was in the first and last scenes of the performance. At the beginning, the prince is asleep in his enormous bed, tossing and turning in a bad dream, while above the headboard the swan is flying. In the final scene, the queen finds her son slumped across his bed, dead, and again above the headboard the swan appears, this time cradling the prince in his arms. This was a striking image that was still in my mind long after I’d left the theatre.
I must admit that my only prior knowledge of Swan Lake has been gleaned from New Line Cinema’s animated film The Swan Princess, which I watched as child. I was therefore very surprised to find that the characters did not have a happy ending! I was also a little disappointed that there wasn’t a gracefully choreographed battle with an evil sorcerer. However, had I researched the actual story before I went these naïve expectations wouldn’t have had to be undermined, and I may have understood the story a little better from the beginning. By far the most shocking difference, though, between The Swan Princess and Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is the character of the prince: in The Swan Princess he is sometimes rude and disrespectful to his mother, but in Swan Lake he is downright violent, even seizing her and throwing her to the floor in one scene. This change made me somewhat uncomfortable, but it did not detract from my enjoyment of the performance – even the scene where he fights with his mother is beautifully executed, each move elegant, athletic, but tightly controlled so that in reality no one was hurt.
In my opinion, the star of the show was Carrie Johnson, who played the prince’s girlfriend. As a dancer, she was perfect: graceful and talented. As an actress, she was engaging, bringing to life what could have been a vapid and irritating character with energy and humour. Johnson herself seemed to love being a ballet dancer – where others showed strain from the effort of continuous dancing, she maintained a brilliant smile that added to her overall charisma and made her a pleasure to watch.
Overall, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake was an excellent performance and adaptation. Although I had some issues interpreting the story from the dancing, and with the differences to my childhood memories of another adaptation, these are issues that I brought with me to the performance, and they did not stop me from enjoying the show or detract from the experience in any way.