That's enough now

Get me back into a darkened room please, quickly

Jackson Fisch (The Swan) and Stephen Murray (The Prince) in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. Photo: Johan Persson

Even enthusiasts have to have a bit of time off, otherwise something you love becomes a chore. Which is to say that having spent the last few weeks doing nothing but eating and drinking, I have seen very little in the way of culture. Outrageous, I know.

It feels weird now though, so I’m very much looking forward to Saturday, when I’m seeing two musicals on the same day. Phew. Back to normal service.

What I’ve seen

I did manage to squeeze in on Tuesday night to Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake: the Next Generation at Sadler’s Wells, revived with a new generation of dancers 30 years since its premiere. It’s now the most successful ‘dance theatre’ production of all time - I’m not sure what that actually means, but it has made a LOT of money and introduced a lot of people to dance who might not otherwise have made the leap, as it were.

It was a treat. I haven’t seen it in over a decade, and I’d sort of forgotten how Bourne’s story goes (a stifled young prince, trapped in a rigid life of ribbon-cuttings and ship-launchings under the thumb of his sternly unaffectionate but libidinous mother, the queen, experiences an awakening, while drunk and suicidal, in an imagined encounter with a curious swan - a metaphor for his closeted homosexuality - but inevitably freedom is tragically out of his reach).

The first part of it, establishing the prince’s crushingly repressive life, goes on a bit. It’s nice to have the dancing (though a bit less marching around the stage would be welcome), but it helps if it continues to advance the story.

Once the swans get going though, it picks up brilliantly - I’m not sure that Bourne has ever bettered his swan choreography, which seamlessly intertwines classical dance with sinuous, aggressive movements evoking a real, dangerous, wild bird.

The ensemble of swans - all male - are brilliantly dynamic, and the pas de deux between the Swan (here danced almost shockingly sensuously by Jackson Fisch) and the Prince (an appropriately lost-looking Stephen Murray) is beautifully expressive of the caution, curiosity, wariness and then tenderness that develops between the odd pair. Fisch’s appearance in the second act as the Stranger, a highly sexualised counterpoint to The Swan, who appears at a ball, seduces all the women including The Queen (Nicole Kabera, who has been dancing with Bourne’s New Adventures company for 15 years) and confuses the already fragile Prince to the point of disaster, is hot enough to make you wish you hadn’t worn a vest.

I really enjoyed it, and it’s great to see a whole new generation of dancers coming into it, especially through the New Adventures training programme. The show’s running to January 26.

Oh, also I saw Wicked, finally (the film, obv). I liked it. It looks fantastic, a feast of visual detail; it is also too long, but it doesn’t really feel too long, or at least it didn’t to me, even though one of the reasons it took me until just before Christmas to see it was that I was aggrieved that they’d made two movies out of it. Harry Potter has a lot to answer for.

Jonathan Bailey as the naughty-but-nice Fiyero is criminally underused (I’m hoping he has more to do in the second film; I can’t quite remember how the stage show makes use of his character, despite having seen it twice), but the two leads, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, as Elphaba and G(a)linda, are superb - Grande in particular is a revelation, her physical comedy skills are spot on.

I won’t go on about it because everyone who is going to see it probably already has, but Jeff Goldblum is also excellent, of course; just the right combination of twinklingly louche and deeply sinister. I will go and see part two with more enthusiasm, when it comes out in what, a year’s time? Christ.

Also on

You can head to Monday’s free post for a choice list of things that are still running and for which you can actually buy tickets, but here are a few additional treats.

It was announced this morning that the National Gallery’s Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers exhibition, which ends on Sunday, is to stay open all night on Friday (January 17). Tickets will go on sale for the extra timed slots (which run from 9pm on Friday night until 10am Saturday) this morning (Thursday January 9). You can book here. Do it now.

Regular readers will remember me waxing lyrical a while ago about the Fitzrovia Chapel, a stunning venue tucked away in central London which used to be part of the famous Middlesex Hospital - home to the first dedicated AIDS ward in Britain.

Now a home for cultural rather than spiritual solace (though arguably there’s a considerable overlap), the space has just opened its first exhibition of 2025, In Attendance: Paying Attention in a Fragile World, in partnership with the Roberts Institute of Art, a non-profit organisation that among other things controls the sharing of works from the substantial David and Indrė Roberts Collection - he’s a property developer, collects tons of art; she’s an artist.