A New Black Swan Musical Introduces a More Powerful Villain
The Oscar-winning Natalie Portman ballet thriller moves to the stage with a higher-stakes plot
Illustration: Sara Andreasson for Bloomberg Businessweek
The news that Black Swan would be adapted into a musical was greeted online with reactions like “SCREAMING CRYING” and “HELL YEAH,” plus speculation about whether the result would be “insufferable or amazing.” Although the film came out in 2010, Darren Aronofsky’s brutal vision of the ballet world still attracts a passionate, even possessive, audience.
The first staged version of Black Swan opens at the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 3, directed by Sonya Tayeh with a book by Jen Silverman and a score by Dave Malloy. But the show isn’t a direct translation of a ballet fan favorite into song. It’s a contemporary update that’s conscious of the larger forces working against young artists.