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Adventures in Motion Pictures
Swan Lake Piccadilly Theatre, September 1996 by Lynette Halewood | |||||||
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Adventures in Motion Pictures (AMP) have become the first company in 75 years in London to open a ballet season in a commercial West End theatre in London. AMP's Swan Lake, with its corps of male swans, which won an Olivier award for dance last year, opened last night at the Piccadilly Theatre for a planned 8 week run prior to a world tour. I wish them luck. The publicity is stressing the rapid growth in ballet audiences in this country over the last few years: up to around 3 million from around 2.6 million six years ago . (No, I don't know where the Arts Council gets its estimates from). Many of the original cast from last year's appearance at Sadler's Wells are appearing, including Adam Cooper and Fiona Chadwick of the Royal Ballet. According to a rumour in the Sunday Times, Baryshnikov may guest in it at some point later - only a rumour, I hasten to add. I wrote about this production last November, without managing do justice to its layers of complexity, so I hope you will excuse these further thoughts. While preserving Tchaikovsky's music, it resets the action in 1950s / 1960s Britain, making use of our contemporary obsession with the Royal family, publicity and isolation, tabloid journalism, the media and sex. Choreographer Matthew Bourne's imagination and inventiveness runs riot - he probably throws in too many characters and too many jokes, but mixes the wit with a rather more disturbing, darker elements. The isolation and artificiality of the Prince's existence is briskly put across in the opening scene, as he get a lesson in practising synchronised waving with his mother the Queen (Fiona Chadwick, a figure of glamorous, icy malevolence, in a series of wonderful 50's satin gowns). The Royal party's visit to the ballet with the Prince's unsuitable girlfriend in tow is the setting for a send up of 19th century romantic ballet (the only time you see a pointe shoe on stage). From here we move on to a fraught mother-son confrontation, and the prince's incognito visit to a 60s nightclub where the girl dumps him, leaving the humiliated and lonely Prince in the gutter. All this zooms along at a great pace, put across by the company with great energy and verve with a series of lightning costume changes. So far, all has been fun and froth. Only the Prince's unresolved relationship with his distant mother, and his childish dream / nightmares of a swan hint at something darker. The atmosphere changes abruptly as the swans erupt on to the stage to as the prince is about to throw himself into the lake. These are big, wild, and angry, not exquisite delicate creatures but untamed and terrifying, with strange twisting pecking and jabbing movements. I could almost hear them hiss. Only one is approachable. The prince lays his head on the Swan's breast as he tried to do earlier on his mother's. Except, of course, that the Swan is Adam Cooper. There is a final tender image of the Prince curled around the body of the swan like a small child. The second half continues at a frantic pace. The Royal Ball comes off well - the national dances, instead of interrupting the action carry it forward as a series of confrontations between the Prince and the Swan, now in black, who has invaded the ball and is busy seducing all the women, including the Queen. After the prince's breakdown, the action moves to his bedroom. The swans emerge suddenly from under his bed - I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle. If the swans were frightening before, they are more so now: like the original, this Swan Lake must end in the death of the lovers. | ||||||||
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