A ‘Lake’ Full of Feathers

I wish I could agree with the ecstatic reviews Lewis Segal has accorded the new “Swan Lake” (“Imagine Swans as a Force in Contemporary Ballet,” May 27).

I was wrong, I suppose, in anticipating a stage heavy with strong, white cobs, each one of whom would at least approach the feathered eroticism of John Phillip Law’s angel in “Barbarella.” Instead we were given a flock of petulant birds, clad in plumaged bloomers that might have been more appropriate clothing for the goose in an English pantomime. The same men gave off more charged masculinity as the uniformed objects of the Queen mother’s lubricity.

I could go on. The pecking to death of Prinny and his swan at play’s end recall Sebastian’s death in “Suddenly Last Summer” and carries just about as much conviction.

Matthew Bourne is more than talented. His lateral response to the music in the nightclub scene was no less than brilliant, his literal response to it in the Spanish Dance in Act 2, equally fine, but this “Swan Lake” is for the birds.

TONY TANNER

Los Angeles