Dance: Swan Lake, Edinburgh Playhouse, Edinburgh
The silliest Swan Lake ever
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Your support makes all the difference.Films of an owl winking are shown repeatedly in Jan Fabre's production ofSwan Lake for the Royal Ballet of Flanders. A hint, could that be, not to take it too seriously, because this is by far the silliestSwan Lake I ever saw.
It might have been worse. At least the Festival advertisements announcing music by Stravinsky proved a false alarm, and we have Tchaikovsky, quite a bit cut, interrupted by episodes performed in silence, and overlaid by the screeching of owls, but decently played by Birmingham's Royal Ballet Sinfonia under a Flemish conductor, Koen Kessels. There endeth the good news. Rejigging an established masterpiece provokes certain questions. Has he told the story better? Are the characters more interesting? Does the new version suit the music? And are the new dances good? The answer each time is a resounding "no".
Fabre introduces several new figures. A dwarf with a sword keeps killing people. A chap with no shirt repeatedly judders, collapses in fits, or acts like an animal. A man with a long beak and a red stick slowly, tiresomely crosses the stage again and again: he must be the one named as Plague Doctor (but why?). And a man in armour walks on, stands doing nothing, and walks off again, as if they bought the costume, then couldn't think what to do with it.
On the other hand, there is no real context for the action, characters are not established or developed – pity the prince with no proper role to play. Even the live owl on Rothbart's head might as well be stuffed, since he just sits there. Equally, Fabre's set designs leave the action in a featureless limbo. As for the dances, Act Two, by the lake, does offer a tawdry approximation to the famous standard version by Ivanov. But Fabre's own choreography is trite, conventional and boring.
In these circumstances there's not much the dancers can do to make an impression. The men are favoured over the women. A jester has the most showy steps, and sometimes the prince too, but all are rather pointless. Wim Vanlessen and Priit Kripson did their best with these parts on opening night, and the dwarf Jurgen Verheyen, has some neat physical tricks too. Aysem Sunal's double roles as Odette and Odile, heroine and rival, are pallid.
Be warned: there is no interval in the show which lasts two-and-a-quarter hours. As much an endurance test for us as for the poor dancers.
Until 24 August
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