Car Man – Bradford Alhambra
If you came along to Car Man expecting a straight dance version of Bizet’s classic opera you would be disappointed but instead buckle up for a dark and raunchy ride through lust and murder.
New Adventures Artistic Director Matthew Bourne, who devised and directed this piece, says Car Men was inspired by Carmen’s heady blend of lust and revenge, but the only real connection was the use of the opera’s familiar 40-minute Shchedrin arrangement as the basis of a dynamic longer score composed by Terry Davies. Instead, this was a production heavily influenced by James M Cain’s 1934 classic noir novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, later made into a similarly seamy movie starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Not surprisingly Car Man started off in a 1950s small garage in the sleepy mi...