The Car Man (Bourne)
It previewed for the first time on Tuesday, May 16, 2000, at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, England, and was subsequently staged at the Old Vic in London in September of that year.
The action takes place in the 1960s over a period of nine months in a small Italian American community in the fictional mid-western town of Harmony, USA.
Main characters The clubs The county jailhouse Mechanics and friends The ballet begins with the sound of a car engine revving.
In Scene One, the sound of tools clashing with metal can be heard as Bruno, Chad, Dirk, Frankie, "Hot" Rod, Marco, Rocco and Vito – mechanics employed by Dino Alfano, owner of Dino's Garage – repair cars in the early evening.
During this time, Dino shows his crassness and lack of respect for Lana by pinching her bottom and groping her in public.
Seeing this, Dino takes down the "Man wanted" sign and tears it up, indicating that he has decided to hire Luca as a part-time mechanic.
Too hot to work, the mechanics, wearing sleeveless tank tops or stripped to their waists, laze around the garage and flirt with their girlfriends.
Dino arrives, looking rather silly in a straw hat, Hawaiian shirt, Bermudas, and socks and sandals.
Luca begins flirting with Lana, who is kneading dough for bread, and mutual seduction ensues.
They make love, and Luca subsequently emerges dressed only in his underwear and an unbuttoned shirt, smoking a cigarette.
Dino ascends the metal staircase leading to the apartment, but trips and makes a clattering noise.
Just as Dino enters the apartment, Luca leaves by throwing his clothes out of another window and climbing down a fire escape.
Smarting from Dino's attempts to assert dominance over the proceedings and especially his wife, Lana and Luca sneak off from the party for a dalliance in the garage.
To Luca and Lana's horror, Dino is not dead – he crawls out of the office and grabs Angelo, seeking help.
After the performance, Luca starts spending money lavishly on buying drinks and gambling with some of the beatniks, though he keeps losing.
"[5] The story is loosely based on the 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by American novelist James M. Cain (1892–1977) and the 1946 and 1981 films of the same name respectively starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, and Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
[6] In the films, Frank, a drifter, stops at a rural California diner for a meal and ends up working there.
The diner is operated by a beautiful young woman, Cora, and her much older husband, Nick, a Greek immigrant whom she does not love.
Although they do turn against each other, a clever ploy from Cora's lawyer prevents her full confession from coming into the hands of the prosecutor.
Bourne introduces into the story the themes of unrequited love, betrayal and revenge present in some of his other ballets such as Swan Lake.
A homoerotic element is also present: the protagonist Luca is bisexual – he has an affair with Angelo, and also kisses one of the mechanics working at Dino's Garage on the lips to annoy him; the fact that Angelo has been raped in prison by the warden, Dexter, is alluded to; and two of the mechanics, Marco and Vito,[5] make out with each other.
The Car Man was originally produced by Matthew Bourne's company Adventures in Motion Pictures.
Subtitled "An Auto-Erotic Thriller",[7] the ballet first previewed on 16 May 2000 at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, England,[7][8] and then was staged at the Old Vic in London in September of that year.
[9] The ballet was filmed for TV in the UK by Channel 4 and broadcast at Christmas in 2001; it was subsequently released on DVD.
The principal cast of the film included Scott Ambler as Dino, Saranne Curtin as Lana, Alan Vincent as Luca, Etta Murfitt as Rita, and Will Kemp as Angelo.
[10] The Car Man played in Los Angeles in summer 2001 and was supposed to transfer to New York, but plans to do so were set aside after the terrorist attacks in the US of 11 September 2001.
[citation needed] In 2007, The Car Man was revived by Bourne's present company New Adventures under the subtitle "Bizet's Carmen Reimagined"[11] and toured the UK between 18 June and 17 November 2007.
The Car Man was revived and toured again from the 16th of April 2015 and finished at Sadler's Wells on the 8th of August 2015, a day earlier than planned due to the death of Jonathan Ollivier, who played the role of Luca, in a motorbike accident.
[13] The Car Man was then later revived and redistributed via DVD and Blu-ray in 2017 by Illuminationations Media and New Adventures Ltd production for Sky, 2015.
Critics comments include "full of dramatic and choreographic juice",[16] "sizzling and fizzing with lust",[17] and "a fast-moving thriller that contains all the elements of a film noir".
