Consulting Director: Krystian Godlewski
Tango is traditionally one of the steamier ballroom dances in the Latin repertoire. So, a backstage drama in which a pair of Tango dancers break up minutes before performing should be a slam dunk. It is depressingly disappointing, then, that The Swan, The Werewolf and Gianpiero proves to be a largely passionless affair.
The script is the main problem here. Production company Drama Queen Studios omits a writer credit from their play, perhaps to spare the blushes of whoever put together some highly simplistic and clichéd dialogue. As Esteban Mereles’s Mateo and his partner, Roxana (Agata Nielsen), bicker, one yearns for the music to kick in and the dancing to start.
Unfortunately, the first dance, the Tango de Roxane from Moulin Rouge!, feels as emotionless and stilted as the dialogue. A reprise of that song fares better when the couple perform to the same track on their public stage, as their relationship breakdown starts to play out physically and emotionally to the music.
That, however, becomes the high point of proceedings. As James Wilkinson’s erratically accented Gianpiero, a director who delights in telling us how accomplished he is – whether through delusion or not is impossible to gauge – deals with the fallout of Mateo and Roxana’s break-up, he woos each to appear in his new production, a masked dance where Roxana is to play a swan and Mateo a werewolf.
Quite why Gianpiero has picked two such creatures remains a mystery. The “werewolf” role involves no transformation, so it could just as easily have been a wolf. Nor is it fully clear why the swan appears as a veiled bride, or why these two animals are getting married onstage.
Before then, we see Wilkinson attempt to seduce his dancers in turn, giving Gianpiero a small dance number with each while telling a different version of his own backstory. Is he really a descendant of Julius Caesar and connected to Monaco’s Grimaldi royal family? Is the golden laurel wreath he wears a magical talisman handed down from his Roman ancestors, or a tacky piece of jewellery he recently bought? We shall never know, or indeed care, since the time invested in giving us these disparate tales never pays off.
The remaining dialogue comes hesitantly, as if the cast have only just come off book. Some of the dancing gives the same impression, particularly a dance between Wilkinson and Mereles. Nielsen comes across as much the most confident of the trio, hinting that there may, in fact, be the germ of a dramatically engaging dance piece hidden deep, deep within this.
As it is, The Swan, The Werewolf and Gianpiero – billed as an hour long but only just edging over 45 minutes – still manages to feel turgid, turning a dance of sultry passion into one of ennui and missed opportunities. “Pain is fleeting, glory is eternal,” we are told early on – but this is a show in which the pain feels interminable.
Reviewed on 15 July 2026
