RB Flanders 'Swan Lake' reviews 'Swan Lake' reviews Flanders reviews more Lynette Halewood reviews

I didn’t have much time to read the very extensive programme notes before the production began – getting crowds into the Playhouse is always a struggle. I only got as far as the statement from the Royal Ballet of Flanders Artistic Director Robert Denvers that “the concept and vision of Jan Fabre’s Swan Lake enhances Petipa’s choreography and is more interesting and logical to read than most Swan Lake productions on offer today”.

Hmm. Well this is what we got. Fabre has added a number of characters which Petipa so thoughtlessly forgot to include. There’s a psychotic dwarf who wanders through the action, randomly stabbing characters at intervals, who sink to the floor and then after a few minutes rise up and continue dancing as if nothing had happened. There’s a man in a suit of armour with something like antenna or a TV aerial on his head who wanders onto the stage at intervals, stands for a while and then leaves. There is a robed character with a long white nose and a big red stick who also appears at intervals – later, from the cast list, he appears to be The Plague Doctor. There is also a major role for one of the male corps who periodically has outbreaks of writhing fits which are ignored by the rest of the company until he too gets up as if nothing has happened and joins in the dancing. Rothbart wears a live owl tethered to his head for the duration of the proceedings – a very vocal owl who didn’t look the slightest bit pleased to be there.

Owls are big in this production: it opens with the hugely magnified view of an owl’s eye projected on to a screen through which we can see the princess Odette, and in blink of the owl’s eye she is transformed into a swan. A very clever, neat way of showing this and highly theatrical. But it was all downhill from there. The work is played straight through, without any intervals. The magnified owl appears for a few minutes to blink and make owl noises instead of giving the audience – and the dancers – a break. This may have been an attempt to stop the audience leaving part way through, but it didn’t succeed in that case, as there was a good deal of restlessness and scurrying for the exits at these points.

Somewhere beneath all this, a production of Swan Lake is going on. There are the familiar characters: there is the Queen, Prince Siegfried, Odette, the swans, Rothbart. The outlines of the story remain, although the director’s (allegedly) Big Ideas and endlessly fussy stage business more or less negate any sympathy or feelings we might have for the lovers. This is very much director’s theatre, intended to demonstrate the extreme cleverness of its creator. Jan Fabre, if we go by the programme notes, clearly imagines he is the heir of Petipa and Balanchine, but my real objection to this production is not so much the many crass and self indulgent stage conceits (which provide no striking new insights) but the staggering banality of most of the choreography. Ivanov’s Act 2 swan scenes survive in an abbreviated and simplified form, but even this puts the rest of the dance to shame.

Act 1 opens in silence, with the dwarf killing various men wearing animal skins who then reappear as he courtiers. For most of the lovely Act 1 music, four couples appear and all dance simple steps in unison. Then four different couples appear an dance simple steps in unison. Then four different couples appear an dance simple steps in unison. Then four different couples appear an dance simple steps in unison. If you think this is boring to read, think what it was like to sit through it. Siegfried has very little dancing to do and his character is never established – he does a lot of posing with a crossbow. The décor is a wall of gravestones, and skeletons of animals are periodically lowered from the ceiling.

Act 2 is mercifully much closer to the classic choreography. However, Fabre has added a line of knights in armour who observe Siegfried and Odette’s pas de deux and, in unison, wipe their eyes and wring out their handkerchiefs. It is a striking image but its effect is to distance the audience from any sense of involvement with the lovers. The pas de deux has been rather simplified too, culminating in Siegfried’s swinging Odette round and round in the air, as you might twirl a child in a playground, or perhaps see in ice dancing. It jarred decidedly with the context of the other steps – though this a small quibble in the face of the rest of it.

Act 3 is preceded by a dance of the knights in armour in silence. Dance is perhaps the wrong term for it – not much movement is possible but there are lots of bangs and crashes. Act 3 is the ball, but there are no national dances. The six princesses appear, and Siegfried dancers a few steps with each – again nothing too challenging or remotely inventive. Odile appears and there is a sketchy pas de deux. She does get to do the 32 fouettees – unfortunately it was difficult to concentrate on her at this point as Rothbart's owl tried to take off at this point and needed quite an effort to settle. It’s a curiously undramatic and uninvolving encounter, and Siegfried appears to be a complete blank as a character.

Act 4 returns us to the lakeside, but less of the classic choreography seems to survive here. The ending is a bit of a cop out. The lovers disappear under a curtain of blue satin, but later reappear – survivors or ghosts. We don’t know and it’s hard to care. The standard of dancing is not striking high – somewhere below ENB level. If the leading dancers failed to make much of their roles they could hardly be blamed. There is a jester figure who attempts some more virtuosic passages but these aren’t despatched with any great panache – the audience nevertheless seized on them. The audience applauded quite generously at the end.

The programme notes are very extensive with five pages of explanation of the symbolism and a further four pages on Fabre’s achievements It’s a gem. If only I had known that the zoomorph was “an atavism of the world before ballet, product of a metamorphosis that was never completed”. And so on. Outright winner of he award for most pretentious programme this year – possibly even this decade. There’s plenty about the history of Swan Lake too, though I have some doubts on some of the statements presented as undisputed fact – it is really true that the 1937 version by Asaf Messerer with a happy ending is the version which is now most often staged ? (Not in the UK, I would think).

This particular Emperor has no clothes. If this production comes your way (it tours to France, Italy and the Netherlands) avoid - go to something else. Unless you particularly like owls. Advice to the owl: go for a job in the Harry Potter films instead.