The Car Man review, Royal Albert Hall: A deft, intense reinvention, simmering with danger

Will Bozier and Zizi Strallen give energetic performances as Luca and Lana in this huge yet intimate show

Will Bozier as Luca in Matthew Bourne’s ‘The Car Man’ (Johan Persson)

In 2000, choreographer Matthew Bourne turned Carmen into The Car Man, creating a new plot and moving the action to 1950s America. The result was a danced film noir: a world of diners, neon, and ferocious, small-town sexual tension. For the Royal Albert Hall’s 150th anniversary, Bourne has reworked The Car Man at arena scale. It’s a deft reinvention, with performances that flourish to fill this huge space.

The stage is a wide platform at one end of the hall, with a long catwalk thrust out into the arena – the dust road into this town in the middle of nowhere. The car man is Luca, a drifter who answers a “Man Wanted” sign at Dino’s diner, then gets involved with both Dino’s wife Lana, and with Angelo, a vulnerable young man working at the local garage.

The large cast makes the town a little less one-horse than it looked in conventional theatres. Dancers spill over the performance space, brawling and flirting through exuberant numbers. Bourne’s choreography is full of observed body language, tiny moments of physical intensity that register on a big scale. New Adventures, his own company, are natural dance actors.

As Lana, Zizi Strallen has a swinging walk that exaggerates the wiggle of her hips, but underlines her self-awareness. This Lana knows the effect she makes, and knows she doesn’t quite fit in. Strallen switches between held-in tension and sudden abandon, letting herself go in response to male attention.

Will Bozier’s Luca is all reaction – headlong energy driving him from one confrontation to the next. As Angelo, Paris Fitzpatrick goes from bullied to vengeful; he grows in power, but shows us his lost innocence, too. Alan Vincent, the first Luca in 2000, returns to this revival as Dino, Lana’s abusive husband. Even in early comedy scenes, he brings an undercurrent of threat. This story’s violence starts long before Luca arrives.

The music, adapted by Terry Davies from Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite, amps up the percussion with the clatter of the diner and car shop. Brett Morris conducts with a flair for drama. In a scene for Angelo and Kayla Collymore as his former girlfriend, the hushed, stealthy strings are unsettlingly quiet: danger simmering away.

Chris Davey’s lighting design is both atmospheric and crisp, casting a heat-wave glow over the stage or picking out forbidden movement behind steamed and smeared windows. It’s characteristic of a show that can be both wide-screen and intimate.

Until 19 June; www.royalalberthall.com