Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake Blu-ray Movie Review

The Bourne Revision.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 9, 2012

It almost sounds like one of those mad skits from Monty Python’s Flying Circus: a rural ballet company wants to do Swan Lake but doesn't have many females, with only men available for the corps. Well, why not? Men dressing in drag is a long theatrical tradition going back untold millennia, and for some reason seems especially alluring to Brits in particular (witness those crazy Monty Python gents themselves, regularly clad in frumpy dresses and talking in insane falsettos). But Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is no joke, and has become the rather unlikely world record holder for longest running ballet both on Broadway and in the West End. And though it predates the Stephen Schwartz musical based on Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked by several years, this Swan Lake takes the same basic idea of revisiting a hoary classic and seeing it from a different character’s perspective. The problem here, though, is at least twofold: though they’re really not that far apart in chronology, there’s somehow a different audience reaction to tweaking The Wizard of Oz than there is to radically reinventing Swan Lake, and some purists have been positively outraged at the liberties Bourne has taken with the iconic source material. But even granting Bourne’s artistic license to reimagine the work in his own way, this Swan Lake seems at times out to deliberately provoke, not just with a not very subtle homoerotic element but perhaps more pointedly (at least for British audiences), a somewhat barbed view of the Royal Family.

The original Swan Lake is of course a gynocentric fairy tale, but its genesis is a matter of much scholarly debate and dispute. Some Russians insist it was an evolved version of an ancient Russian folktale, while others point to various connections it has with the story of Ondine, a story that was appropriated by Hans Christian Anderson for The Little Mermaid and which was itself made into a ballet called Ondine by Frederick Ashton, which received a Blu-ray release which was reviewed here. Some may actually see a certain parallel to the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, for like that doomed duo, Swan Lake deals with a daughter—Princess Odette—who has been kidnapped by a devilish villain (Von Rothbart) and whose mother has attempted her rescue, only managing to create a lake from her own tears in the process.

In the more recognizable formulation by Tchaikovsky, Odette is under a spell which makes her appear in the form of a swan and can only reclaim her original human form at night. Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette, but is tricked by Von Rothbart and his daughter Odile, whom he has disguised as Odette, leading to the ballet’s tragic consequences (although it’s interesting to note that Tchaikovsky originally had a typical “happily ever after” for his ballet, which his brother altered to its more frequently performed version when the ballet was revived in 1895.

Matthew Bourne turns this story on its head and also injects some piquant political commentary as well. In his version, it is the Prince (danced by Dominic North as an adult and Joseph Vaughan as a young boy) who is the centerpiece of the drama. The Prince is under the thumb of his imperious mother, The Queen (Nina Goldman), an obviously distant but perhaps well meaning woman who is all about appearances. The Prince is obviously struggling to break free of the strictures (and structure) royal life has foisted upon him, even as Von Rothbart, his Private Secretary, tries to tart up the Prince’s life by providing him with a trashy girlfriend (Madelaine Brennan).

Bourne diverges more and more from the traditional scenario as the ballet goes on, positing a Royal Family which is (to say the least) dysfunctional, and whose dysfunction leads to what appears to be the mental breakdown of The Prince (it’s interesting to note that Bourne eschews any real program notes, something patently odd with a ballet which obviously has a plot). The Prince begins having visions of Swans (and in fact has one in the ballet’s opening moments, when The Prince is still a child), and slowly those visions seem to take over his consciousness, something that Von Rothbart plays into with a “performance” by his own son (instead of his daughter), a muscular creature danced here by Richard Winsor.

As radical as all of this may seem, the ballet works in its own kind of furious way to not just dispel long held images of how it “should” be done, but to create its own mythos to fill the void of what Bourne has so strenuously sought to tear down. Brits might be understandably more upset by the images of their (supposedly) beloved Royal Family, none of which are particularly complimentary, and as the ballet moves into its rather hyperbolic final act become downright disturbing. The other elements of this revision will either delight or shock audiences, depending on their tolerance for radical reimaginings of legendary pieces.

What can’t be denied is Matthew Bourne’s supreme craftsmanship with regard to the actual dance elements. This is a ballet which easily segues from classical forms and tropes to more modern dance techniques without missing a beat. The corps here, made largely of men (at least in the swan scenes), casts a fascinating new light on roles which countless young girls have dreamed about dancing when they’ve seen the traditional Tchaikovsky version. Gender equality has tended to often be thought of as bringing women into parity with men, and so it’s perhaps this Swan Lake’s greatest achievement that it manages to reverse that idea and let men dance roles normally given to females. That very idea gives the final moments of Billy Elliot some of its defining emotional power, and it’s probably no mere accident that Billy is going out on stage to conquer the audience as part of Matthew Bourne’s startling reinvention of one of the glories of classical ballet.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Classics and Kultur with a VC-1 encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. While this is a generally very nice looking high definition presentation, it doesn't quite pop with the vivid crispness that some of the recent releases of, say, Opus Arte presentations of The Royal Ballet presentations routinely do. The image is just slightly fuzzy at times, not helped by a tendency to have lighting schemes placed upstage of the dancers, which sometimes cast their silhouettes in effulgent glows. On the other hand, color pops quite admirably throughout the presentation, and close-ups reveal some very nice fine detail (including the occasional fly away dust mite from the swans' feathers). Contrast is generally very strong, though shadow detail is somewhat lacking in some very darkly lit scenes (see screencap 8 for a good example).

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake does feature lossless audio, some may be disappointed that the only lossless track here is the stereo fold down, delivered via an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mix, while the surround mix is a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (at 448 kbps). The LPCM mix is very nicely rendered, if quite narrow and lacking much in the way of hall ambience. The orchestra tends to sound almost monaural at times, a big massed wall of instrumentation with occasional solos panned left or right. Despite that mixing choice, things are very nicely clear throughout the soundtrack, and dynamic range is exceptional. The New London Orchestra plays very well under the baton of David Lloyd-Jones. The Dolby track is notably pallid even by comparison with the LPCM track, with a rather anemic low end. But at least it immerses the listener in some surround activity and provides a bit more ambient reverb breathing room than the LPCM track does.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unfortunately no supplements are included on this Blu-ray. A featurette examining the differences between Bourne's staging and the Tchaikovsky ballet would have been a great idea. There's not even an insert booklet.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Given that reference to the Stephen Schwartz recasting of The Wizard of Oz above, this ballet might be referred to as Matthew Bourne's wicked Wicked ways, and the choreographer-entrepreneur's fearless revisionism is certainly abundantly on display in what has become one of his defining pieces. Some will no doubt be shocked at the liberties Bourne has taken with the source material, while others will just as certainly be thrilled. This isn't thoughtless "Eurotrash," even if it skirts some of the unseemly elements that define that sad newer trend in "revisals". Brits may be most taken aback with this rendering, though considering the overwhelming success this Swan Lake has enjoyed on that side of the pond, perhaps the "old guard" has resigned itself to the fact that there's a new way of doing things, consequences be damned. This Blu-ray really could have used some supplementary material putting this ballet in its proper context, but otherwise this package offers solid video and audio, with a few niggling caveats. Recommended.