Matthew Bourne’s The Automotive Man is a steamy, pulp-fiction tackle the opera Carmen. Its object of need is Luca, a sweaty hunk who has drifted right into a small city in Fifties America, the place he two-times his lovers: Lana, the sultry spouse of the native storage proprietor, and Angelo, a mild, bullied younger man who doesn’t match the macho girls-and-gangs tradition round him. The present was successful when first carried out in 2000, acclaimed for its potent mix-up of gender and style (buffs could have enjoyable recognizing the movie references, the nods to ballets, trendy dance and musicals, and savouring the retro designs and iconography). Now it's again in a scaled-up model – larger! bolder! beefier! – for a restricted run at London’s Royal Albert Corridor.
What this huge auditorium loses – some pressure-cooker depth, some dramatic element – the manufacturing makes up for. The fantastically versatile, multilevel set cleverly incorporates a dwell orchestra and billboard screens; it might change scenes on the flick of a lightweight change, and extends alongside a thrust stage down which the dancers can parade or hurtle. The amplified music combines numbers from Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite with sound results, in order that it serves as each orchestral rating and cinema soundtrack.
Bourne ties the choreography tightly to the storytelling. After the preliminary scene-setting group numbers, act one is sparked, pushed and at last combusted by carnal lust: Luca (Will Bozier in tonight’s manufacturing; there are two alternating casts) has a grapplesome coupling with smouldering Lana (Zizi Strallen), adopted swiftly by an enthusiastic back-seat experience with smitten Angelo (Paris Fitzpatrick) that units the entire automobile quivering. The remainder of the forged, having swapped and tasted one another’s cigarettes, get away into polymorphous rutting – not a lot intercourse between particular person folks as Eros unleashed. If the ensemble choreography tends in direction of blockiness, it’s the partnering that issues right here: limb-tangling, boundary-breaking, power-shifting and space-devouring.
In true potboiler fashion, intercourse results in deceit and violence, and act two is fuelled by guilt and revenge. The lead dancers carry the story with full-bodied conviction, however the complete forged appear to relish their roles in a piece that's outrageously melodramatic and deeply severe, stylish and trashy, manipulative and honest. Like Luca himself, The Automotive Man overtly will get to have it each methods.
On the Royal Albert Corridor, London, till 19 June
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