Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake: Review

After 30 years of accolades, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake still has audiences on their feet at the end, enthralled, moved and wanting more.

This deconstructed and thematically enhanced version of the original ballet is an unflinching look at royalty, toxic repressions and the mental health crisis we currently face also seemed to have a nod.

The Prince is subject to constant shoves and pulls and dismissals, and we know it is only a matter of time before he will break, he longs for a world of freedom and thinks he has found it with his love interest, the delightful Girlfriend played by Bryony Wood. So, when he follows her into her real world, with its seedy dances (that are incredible) and mercenary necessities, that is the moment his last thread of hope in human nature ends.

Thanks to Bourne’s vision and that of set designer Lez Brotherston we are in constant pursuit of finding the Prince in each aesthetically elevated scene, as he is trampled and towed along. When he finds the Swan he is still an outsider but is cautiously led in and delights in the chance.

To watch live the magnificence of the Swans is really something all theatregoers should experience. Fierce, enticing and untamed they flex in unison, in moves that we can only imagine the significance of. And this is one of the most luring things in this production – we don’t know what their world is. We understand their ways, but it is exotic and something that the young repressed Prince longs to covet. When one Swan is curious of the Prince, then we feel something other-worldly is about to begin.

But Prince’s mental waters begin to get muddied and by the time he meets The Stranger at a party at the Palace, he cannot hold purchase on his emotions. He is enraged and tragedy ensues.

The whole ensemble is magnificent and locked together in this tale, giving us linear story, spectacle and magic.

It starts with humour, almost letting us gently dip our toe into the story and ends like a fever dream. You will never know who, if anyone, really cares for The Prince, or if his privilege and reality is so skewed that he cares only for himself. He lies finally on the white sheets of his giant bed, perhaps finally free.

I was reminded of when I was first married, me and my husband got a rib of beef for Sunday dinner, (years since we had beef now) and it was expensive but amazing. We said we always had to find the money for it, even at the sacrifice of other things. That’s how I felt about Swan Lake. I don’t want to see anything that isn’t so delicious ever again.

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is at Lowry, Salford from 21-30 November 2024.