Not Only Opera

Nailed it: Swan Lake at the ROH

Swan Lake
Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House
Grand Tier Box 63, complimentary (general rehearsal)
17 May 2018
ROH page

I’ll confess to having been bored by some performance of Swan Lake in the past. Great music, of course, great ideas, great symbolism – but, I mean, there’s a lot of ballet. In the Royal Ballet’s previous production by Anthony Dowell Act I’s pointless pre-partying could seem endless, Act III’s role call of uncharacterized princesses like swallowing your cod liver oil before you could get to the good stuff – even the great white swan pas de deux could leave me cold.

So I thought Liam Scarlett had a task on his hands, and the crumminess of his only full-length work Frankenstein made me doubt he was the right man for the job. I am proven wrong. So wrong. This Swan Lake filled me with the best ballet feeling: for three hours if I wasn’t beaming ear to ear I had tears rolling off my chin. I enjoyed this rehearsal so, so much – even if a handful of moments had obviously fallen victims to the company’s punishing schedule.

Those moments aside, along with the designs and the production the dancing of the company made me glow with undeserved pride. Each element enhances the others. Take the tutus. I like a good tutu but I’ve never loved them with the kind of rabid frenzy you see on Instagram – but the last three acts gave me a touch of that madness. In Act III the four princesses look divinely regal and individuated, even when all they had to do was sit and watch. In the white acts the precision of the patterns, the fluttering of the tutus, the avian shoulder shivers gave me feelings I can only describe as spiritual. John Macfarlane’s designs enhance Scarlett’s storytelling and both rest on and celebrate the dancing. Every detail had been cared for supremely, and I think show Scarlett to be Swan Lake’s ideal producer.

The narrative innovations Scarlett has made are subtle and well chosen: Siegfried’s family is already snarled in Von Rothbart’s plans; Von Rothbart himself is fuelled by an impotent self-loathing; Odette gives herself over to despair to the anger of her swan sorority; Siegfried, Albrecht-like, must live on with his responsibility for his true love’s death. All great stuff. Even the dubious blink-and-you’ll-miss-it addition of a flock of menacing black swans at the end of Act III serves its purpose. Macfarlane provides space and support for every step in the slightest detail: shared pastel colours for the cheery Benno and two princesses in their pas de trois set them worlds apart from the heavy grief of the black bejewelled Queen and the stern constraints she presses on her son. I pick out one example but there are hundreds to choose from, each costume displaying the dancer to their best advantage while also giving meat to tell their individual narrative, each set doing the exact same for the cast collectively.

That collective cast. It is unfathomable to think of the amount of work the female corps and their ballet mistresses have done – they might never have the eerie precision of the Mariinsky but that’s because they achieve something else, a narrative chorus with power that pushes events to their tragic conclusion. Act IV thrilled me with its depiction of collective consciousness and decision in a way it never has before.

And then there are the individuals. This felt less of a step-change, I think because basically the RB principals are just as good as they always are. Sarah Lamb, always a storyteller, I think responds to Scarlett’s narrative focus by pushing her mimicry of swan movement to daring levels while maintaining the integrity of line that never breaks with her. Ryoichi Hirano leaps magnificently, sorrowfully, nobly, even when allowing himself in the rehearsal the opportunity to show us all the pain he probably feels most of the time. Thomas Whitehead makes the grimmest-faced meany you’ve ever seen, deadly serious in the new sinister subplot with Kristen McNally’s gorgeous Queen, gaunt and determined in a way that almost stops his costume from being ridiculous. Luca Acri is tireless, caring, empathetic as Benno. What a team. And for making it all happen like this, Scarlett deserves the adulation this will no doubt bring.

Post scriptum

I should remember by now that an even better cast makes a great show even greater, and so it was for my second view of Swan Lake (9 June 2018, Balcony standing D30, £11). Matthew Ball and Natalia Osipova were the names I booked for but the wider cast – Alex Campbell as Benno, Gary Avis as Von Rothbart, Elizabeth McGorian as the Queen – are all the crème-de-la-crème in these roles and along with the same phenomenal female corps told Scarlett’s story with even more nuance and granularity to achieve all the super-sexualized charge this music and this story can carry, which is lots.

Variance in attitude and attack across the cast tells the same story but to a more coherent conclusion that more resonantly ends with a celebration of the collective – as, now that I’ve seen it, I guess most productions of Swan Lake should. That variance is perhaps greatest with Avis, who seems to be drawn to Osipova against his will, to entrap the Queen against his will, trapped in his role of evil magician, even whose triumph in Act III has about it bitter despair. In this context Osipova’s customary wildness becomes yet more demonic, particularly as Odette; she confines Von Rothbart as much as he her, Siegfried a pawn equally to each as he is drawn into the orbit of their all-consuming bond. Ball’s Siegfried is tormented by his obligations, to his mother, to Odette, to himself as he fails all three. Each character is bound and hardened and subjugated by their duty to another. Only if you are deemed irrelevant, like Benno and the princesses, are you safe.

Out of this web of slavery and powerlessness it is only the collective weight of the swan corps that can break through – not the hero Siegfried but only they can end Von Rothbart, only they can take action from Odette’s suicide. As an individual we are vulnerable even to our own ambitions; only as a collective is there the force for change. It’s a pretty sound message for a ballet company, and there’s no two ways about it that it makes for a sensational end to Swan Lake.