THE CAR MAN

Unfasten your seatbelts! Matthew Bourne’s “The Car Man” has arrived at the Festival Theatre, and his aim is to take us on an edgy, exhilarating ride. This revival of Bourne’s millennium hit is the first time the show has been to Edinburgh, and a very welcome pitstop it is indeed.
Even as the audience is arriving, the inhabitants of Harmony (population 375) are on stage fixing cars and flirting in Dino’s garage and snack bar. Gradually the lights are lowered and the music starts to the arrival in town of Luca (James Leece) and his first encounter with Lana (Michaela Meazza), smouldering away on slow burn beneath a Man Wanted sign. Michaela Meazza is magnificent. Her frustration and exasperation with her nerdish husband Dino (Scott Ambler), and her pent up simmering sensuality are superbly expressed. The whole town seems to be on a high hormonal alert, bathed in a welter of Heat and Lust. Only Dino is uncomfortable with this, mopping his brow, and swatting mosquitoes, wearing his sun gear of lurid shirt and straw hat when not in a suit.

This is Carmen re-imagined, based on Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite, with additional music by Terry Davies. The essence of Carmen is here – lust, passion, revenge and murder – but we are in a different time and place, with different characters and an imaginative twist. The score is for percussion and strings, giving a deep pounding rhythm which carries us through the urgency of dance, raw emotion expressed through sinewy motion. It is hard to believe that not a word is uttered, since truly the actions speak louder than words.

In the Cabaret scene, after Dino’s murder, Bourne pokes gentle humour at the usual forms of contemporary dance, with a stylised po-faced version of a Martha Graham type sequence. For the film and the ballet buff this is one of many in-joke references – look out for “The Postman always Rings Twice”, “A Streetcar named Desire”, and many others that are tucked away in this supercharged production.

The set by Lez Brotherston for this vision of small town America is an auto repair shop – complete with classic cars - that has a snack bar on the side. Garage doors raise and lower, walls move in and out, to reveal an apartment, a night club, and even a prison. The set is bathed in warm neon lights that emphasises just how hot and steamy the action is. There is so much happening on stage – in the background, at the side, up front – that it is a show well worth a second visit. This Car Man is a real joyride.

Festival Theatre Tues 30^th Oct – Sat 3^rd Nov, 7.30pm, Sat. 2.30pm

Tickets £8.50- £27.50