Swan Lake
American Ballet Theatre, London Coliseum
A complex, somewhat troubled history has turned Swan Lake into the most manipulated ballet ever. The lack of strict historical constraints has frequently led ballet directors, repetiteurs and choreographers to feel more or less free to intervene in the text, often twisting its narrative and altering the traditional, though not original, choreography. Take, for instance, Kevin McKenzie’s production for American Ballet Theatre, which strives to make the most of the ballet’s performance tradition while at the same time peppering the work with not so stylistically and dramaturgically appropriate additions.
In line with other and historically more famous versions, this one also uses the overture’s yearning notes for a rather superfluous prologue, in which we see Princess Odette fall victim to Rothbart’s evil spell and become a swan — assuming that ridiculously fluffy and lifeless thing in the hands of the evil magician was a swan. Personally, I do not think the prologue is necessary, even though I realise that in this day and age everything has to be told in detail, soap-opera style, to allow for the mental laziness of audience members. Call me old fashioned, but an overture ought to remain an aural experience and not a visual one — something many opera directors refuse to acknowledge, too.
In the opening scene, which suffers from designs that seem to date from the Fifties, with unsympathetically heavy Anne Boleyn-ish dresses for the girls and laughable lycra lederhosen for some of the boys, things are left more or less in place as they should be. Only towards the end is there a brief dramatic episode, which highlights Prince Siegfried’s loneliness. Although the idea is not bad, the dance of the Prince’s friends with their respective girlfriends creates a puzzling narrative detour that ends up confusing not so knowledgeable viewers. The choreography, moreover, clashes stylistically with the more traditional set numbers. Similarly, in Act Three — this production follows the standard Western division of four acts — Rothbart performs a rather debatable seduction dance with all the ladies at the ball, including the Queen Mother, to the haunting notes of the often cut Russian Dance. This additional episode garbles the ballet’s already complex storyline, leading nowhere.
Interestingly, most of the traditional mime acting has been carefully retained, even though it is not always performed correctly. Last Thursday, the gesture for swearing eternal love became the 19th-century mime gesture for ‘peace’ in one act and for ‘waiting’ in another. The most functional revisions of the standard text happen in the final act, which is notoriously the ballet’s most indigestible and least appealing. Streamlined to the bone, McKenzie’s short last act stands out for its fast-paced dramatic crescendo. I only wish the two lovers had not indulged in such an unintentionally comic display of acrobatics when throwing themselves into the lake, Olympic medallist-like. Angel Corella, as Siegfried, was as romantic as a Walt Disney prince can be, with few or none of the darker tones the part requires. Gillian Murphy, in the double role of Odette/Odile, stood out for her clean technique and well-pondered interpretation — even though her white swan was a tad too icy in my view. She deservedly brought the house down with the pyrotechnics at the end of the black swan pas de deux, which she danced with precision and gusto. As for the rest, the dancing was generally executed with precision, but with such lack of conviction that the whole fairy tale came across as far less credible than usual. All in all this was a competent performance, though not a memorable one.
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