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Feb. 23--Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake," a sensation in the 1990s, is getting its long overdue Chicago premiere in a production on view through Sunday at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.
Bourne's ingeniously revisionist update recasts the Prince (Sam Plant on Tuesday) as a troubled young man dominated by, and attracted to, his mother (Oxana Panchenko). An unmistakable satire of a young Prince Charles, he's looking for love in every wrong place imaginable, from the arms of a blond bimbo to London's nightlife underbelly. Drunk and suicidal late at night in a city park, he surrenders to a soaring, homoerotic vision in which he's romanced by a half swan/half hunk (Alan Vincent) and a horde of beefy cygnets. This is a Prince not so much in the closet as sexually confused, variously drawn to female, male, parent and beast. Later, the black swan alter-ego is a cold-hearted, S&M roue with deadly bisexual allure.
Though widely dubbed the gay "Swan Lake," Bourne's version is actually more complicated, a murky tale of Oedipal repression (the Prince) and midlife nymphomania (the Queen). Paradoxically, the male swan and his cohorts lure the Prince not just into a gay demimonde, but into a world of the spirit, too, a sublime, feathery realm of platonic bliss high above carnal earth. Forbidden sex and a yearning for purity intermix.
It all makes for spectacular staging and both complex and perplexing thematics. Even the production's bravura finale is double-edged: The swans, instead of the original's villainous magician, turn on both the Prince and the lead swan, who tries unsuccessfully to save him. They die, the Prince seemingly from an exhaustion of madness, cradled in an afterlife vision by his swan seducer: a postmodern Pieta.
Ten years after its premiere, the production's royal tweaks are a tad out of date. We're in a different tabloid time now with Charles and Camilla happily dull and domestic, the scandal baton passed on to mischievous Prince Harry. But the production's conceptual novelties are still fresh, at least in classical dance, not nearly as practiced in bold revisionism as theater or opera. And in a cinematic culture where "Brokeback Mountain" is considered daring, the sexual politics of "Swan Lake" remain relevant, still cheeky, post-Freudian and post-gay lib.
As lead swan, Vincent is not ideally cast. He's a bit too portly to carry off the Adonis bit in Act I, and though smooth and buoyant in executing Bourne's lyrical moves, he lacks the requisite charisma.
But his Act II bad boy showmanship explains why he was picked. He revels in Bourne's ballroom riffs, apache machismo and manly swagger. Like so many a ballerina, he's a better Odile than Odette.
As the Prince, Plant, something of an understudy, nevertheless turns out to be an engaging dancer who acts the heck out of the part.
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