A staging that’s yet to take wing
Ballet Swan Lake Royal Ballet, Covent Garden
It was high time the Royal Ballet replaced its long-standing version of Swan Lake. Created in 1987 by the great former principal Anthony Dowell and designer Yolanda Sonnabend, this was a hectic affair that seemed to capture all the garishness of the Tsarist aesthetic, but not its majesty. When Royal Ballet director Kevin O’hare phased it out three years ago, it felt like sound judgment.
So, what of its longawaited replacement? Watching the first night on Thursday proved a fascinating, frustrating experience: I’d frequently find myself inwardly tutting, only suddenly to be pleasantly surprised; then, minutes later, the opposite would happen.
While you can’t blame the Royal’s 31-year-old artist-in-residence, Liam Scarlett, and brilliant designer John Macfarlane for wanting to iron out its inherent narrative wrinkles, their changes raise as many questions as they answer. Meanwhile, Siegfried’s friend, Benno, is inexplicably brought to the fore, and Scarlett’s revised, downbeat climax jars against music that radiates triumph and elation.
At any rate, Scarlett has also been hard at work on the steps, especially in Acts I, III and IV. He has always been a solid and musical neo-classicist with a fine eye for symmetry, and there are no embarrassments here. However, the astonishing detail, musicality and sheer fun in Ashton’s Act III Neapolitan dance (which he has respectfully kept) mark it as something from another era, and a different league.
Surprisingly for Macfarlane (Scarlett’s regular collaborator), the design is variable. The contrast between Act I’s austerity and Act III’S magnificence is, presumably, very deliberate, emblematic of Siegfried’s passage from isolation to infatuation. But the fallout is that Act I lacks atmosphere – and, even more arrestingly, so does the lakeside Act II, Fortress of Solitude-like rock formation and all. When Act III comes, though, the scale, opulence and detail of the court interior (and the costumes) make the eyes boggle.
On opening night, the company expended every last drop of effort and energy to make the show fly. The corps were marvellously united (though were they a little cramped by the width of Macfarlane’s lustrous tutus?) and strong solo work was also everywhere.
However, the show was slow to engage the emotions and, here, we come to the three leads. Marianela Nuñez makes a radiant Odette, and Vadim Muntagirov (as Siegfried) once again proved himself a classicist of marvellous refinement, and an assiduous partner, too. But few, if any, sparks flew between the two of them during their first encounter.
The two dancers engaged more fully in Act III’S Black Swan pas de deux – she a stiletto-like Odile; he soaring nobly through the air. But even here, there was never a hint of the giddy erotic crackle that Nuñez and Carlos Acosta generated together three years ago in the Dowell production’s swansong.
The now almost ubiquitous Von Rothbart didn’t help. Bennet Gartside is one of the finest dancer-actors around but, on Thursday, in the character’s disguised, courtly, perpetually scowling incarnation, he bore a distracting and comic resemblance to Gru from Despicable Me, and struggled to bring genuine menace to the part.
That this new production doesn’t feel definitive is disappointing. It’s hardly an ugly duckling, but nor is it a very fine Swan Lake indeed – here’s hoping it keeps evolving.
In rep until June 21. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; ticketmaster.co.uk