Review: Elf Lyons – Swan at State Theatre Centre of WA
Elf Lyons – Swan at State Theatre Centre of WA
Friday, May 1, 2026
British comedian Elf Lyons returned to Perth Comedy Festival this season, resurrecting one of her earliest works created almost a decade ago, Swan. A wickedly delicious reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake as a comedic solo performance, the evening spectacularly deconstructed this iconic yet often extremely self-serious classic.
Lyons began in a broken Franglais, the patois soothingly musical, as she gave the audience a ten-minute crash course in the world of ballet as per her somewhat hazy childhood recollections. A battle of wills with her mother on attending classes when aged six was remembered this evening as Lyons chain-smoked her way through French New Wave existentialism, yet the sense of both awe and wonder imbued in these memories for the art form itself was pronounced and palpable.
The remainder of the hour would be Lyons’ interpretation of the original work, a very serious tale, requiring a flamboyant parrot costume alongside an extremely passionate lecture on the miscategorisation of lakes. With a near-empty stage combined with the audience’s collective imagination, Lyons envisioned the sorcerer Von Rothbart as ‘Chav in Ibiza’, a loud-mouthed, drug-fuelled walking series of non-sequiturs, just aching to ruin everyone’s night; this one character alone is a clear reason why Tchaikovsky should have engaged a dramaturg before publication.
Lyons explained the purpose of male ballet dancers as twofold—first, to relocate ballerinas to different parts of the stage; and second, to show off the trouser padding. As Prince Siegfried was introduced without any ballerinas to move about, Lyons instead demonstrated the power strut that in modern times would likely lead to a manosphere podcast launch.
During the pivotal hunting trip turned meet-cute, scored to the grand yet sombre backing of Nick Cave’s Into My Arms, Lyons changed character again, this time to white swan Odette, and located her new Siegfried from the front row: debonaire, light on his feet, and a true charmer. Lyons observed as an aside how into the audience participation the Perth crowd was at times earlier in the tour; on the East Coast, her paying public had shrivelled and wilted into their seats rather than fully engage.
Launched directly into Act Two and the royal birthday celebrations, described by Lyons as the world’s most boring Eurovision, Siegfried’s mother The Queen drunkenly danced to Azealia Banks as Von Rothbart arrived, perplexingly changed mid-plot from owl magician to human uncle, bringing black swan Odile to shatter the true love vows uttered only five minutes previously.
As one of the most classic of all ballets, logic, thoughtful questions, and clear communication were already out the window, doubly compounded by the fact that Odette and Odile were the same performer even in productions with more than one cast member. Siegfried had his eyes turned effortlessly to the new swan on the block, and the expected tragedy ensued. Banger soundtrack though.
Swan was a stunning demonstration of peak clownery, with Lyons at all points whip-smart, self-assured, and blazingly confident in her art. She expertly navigated her more than willing audience gamely down the rabbit hole for this charming, eccentric, and downright hilarious journey.
Despite some decidedly barbed commentary towards ballet—covering such topics as ageism, the male gaze, and heteronormative romantic ideals, alongside the wholesale rejection of such in the contemporary arena—Lyons made this sport from a place of deep care and understanding. She noted that performing Swan now felt different to when it was first created, and there was every likelihood that the show would be permanently retired after the current tour ended in New Zealand, making the night feel almost a melancholy yet triumphant death scene all by itself.
The artist departed her stage with the statement that, in the current global polycrisis, silliness is a superpower; comedy is subversive; and the arts, whether deep or shallow, as creator or consumer, cannot be anything but political. The audience thought they were getting a performer in a parrot costume playing a swan, which, yes, they did, but they also got so very much more.
Don’t mourn the likely passing of this one fabulous show; Lyons is only just getting started. An automatic must-see whenever she next returns to Perth.
PAUL MEEK