Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man to open at the Royal Albert Hall

New Adventures will bring Matthew Bourne's The Car Man back to the stage as part of the Royal Albert Hall 150th anniversary celebrations.

The Car Man will play for 14 performances from Thursday 17 – Sunday 27 June 2021 and tickets will go on sale next Thursday, 10 December 2020 at 10am (GMT).

The show is based on Bizet's Carmen, now set in a greasy garage-diner in 1960's America: “The dreams and passions of a small town are shattered by the arrival of a handsome stranger. Fuelled by heat and desire, the inhabitants are driven into an unstoppable spiral of greed, lust, betrayal and revenge.”

Bourne uses Rodion Shchedrin's Carmen Suite together with new arrangements of Bizet's score by New Adventures Associate Artist, Terry Davies.

In a five-star review in The Guardian, Luke Jennings wrote:

Classical choreographers could learn a great deal from Bourne's attention to narrative. Programmes for his productions, as often as not, have no synopsis; the story is told, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, by the dancers on the stage. The difference this makes to the audience's experience cannot be exaggerated. Choreography and dance, no matter how ingeniously beautiful, cannot be enjoyed if you're trying to work out what the hell's going on. It's this configuring of productions for everyone, rather than for a selected cadre of dance-world insiders and cultural initiates, that has brought Bourne worldwide success. The Car Man delivers everything it promises. See it.

The staging will be re-imagined because of the particularities of the large hall, using the full expanse of the Royal Albert Hall and with a cast of 33 dancers, a 25-piece live orchestra and new designs by Lez Brotherston. 

Matthew Bourne  said,

The Car Man may have found its perfect setting in the epic and spectacular surroundings of Britain's favourite venue, the Royal Albert Hall. This unique and iconic landmark will only heighten the visceral thrill and emotional highs of a piece already regarded as a classic favourite in the New Adventures repertoire. As a lifelong lover and supporter of the Royal Albert Hall, I am delighted to be a part of its 150th birthday celebrations!

It is a real career highlight for me to present my work here for the first time and create what will no doubt be, an important moment in New Adventures history.

Whether you have seen The Car Man before or not, you will not want to miss this re-imagined “event” production of the show in an expanded staging that will also be a celebration of our return to live performance after more than fifteen months. We cannot wait to welcome you back too!

Photos by Johan Persson

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.