Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake review: Matthew Ball is both strikingly sensual and full of menace

It’s 23 years since Matthew Bourne ditched Swan Lake’s traditional tights and tutus and created one of contemporary dance’s most iconic images: the black-crested, bare-chested male swan.

At its premiere, there were some walk-outs and even tears among young ballet fans; two decades on and it’s a firm cult classic. This latest revival has seen sections of the plot streamlined and its sets, battered by touring, sensitively revamped; Bourne’s central choreography — ever inventive — needs no such overhaul.

If every ballerina wants to play Swan Lake’s coveted Odette/Odile pairing, then Bourne’s version (The Swan/The Stranger) has long been on every male dancer’s wish list. For that reason, it attracts big names; the latest of which is Matthew Ball. That this 24-year-old can seriously dance is hardly a surprise; the revelation is the physicality he brings to these complex roles. His Swan, eroticism idealised, is full of menace; his Stranger (those 1990s-style leather trousers aside) strikingly sensual, though at times boyish.

The rest of the cast — particularly Liam Mower as the lonely prince who retreats into flights of fantasy and Katrina Lyndon as his unsuitable girlfriend — are also uniformly excellent, all with a great comic touch.

Until January 27