Elf Lyons: Swan
Factory Theatre, April 22 – 24
★★★★
According to Timothée Chalamet, nobody cares about ballet. Try telling that to British comedian and clown Elf Lyons, who has lovingly created Swan as an accessible guide to the art form, specifically the evergreen Swan Lake.
Seemingly playing a fictionalised version of herself and speaking in a mixture of child-like French and English with purposely mispronounced words, this hybrid of physical comedy and satire is hard to categorise and even harder to resist.
Dressed in a parrot outfit concealing a seemingly never-ending array of props and surprises, Lyons makes for an enthusiastic if often bewildered tour guide. Hilariously breaking down the key ballet moves (including the “sexy pair of scissors” and the “Nutribullet”), she explains the most important part of ballet (the curtain calls, of course), reveals why we never see a ballerina over 30 and recreates the most famous dance sequences from Tchaikovsky’s classic with high-kicking fervour.
