But The Car Man falls between stools, an uneasy hybrid of dance and drama. It hasn't the high-romantic punch of the dramas that it feeds off, nor the poetic imagination or affectionate satire of Bourne's Swan Lake and Cinderella. Lez Brotherston's design for the piece, with its car repair shop and sleazy diner, is the show's strongest asset, and looks terrific once the house lights go down. The other big hit with the highly enthusiastic audience is the music. The familiar tunes from Bizet's opera Carmen are here presented in a considerably expanded arrangement by Terry Davies, which more than doubles the 40-minute ballet score Rodion Shchedrin made for his wife Maya Plisetskaya at the Bolshoi.
Enthusiasm is the best attribute of the cast, too.
Replacing the gypsy heroine are a pair of lawlessly erotic lovers, a charismatic drifter called Luca and the siren wife of the elderly garage owner, and as in AMP's cult hit Swan Lake the plot is complicated by several twists of gender and sexual orientation. Also part of the mix are the thriller conventions of film noir and the intransigent Fates of Greek tragedy, but what is impressive is not only the controlled tension of director Matthew Bourne's storytelling but the close-up detail of his characterisation. In their duets the interplay of violence and desire becomes so combustible you flinch from the heat. There are still problems with the show that the touring period has not ironed out, notably that the women's choreography does not equal the men's in complexity and glamour. But in other areas the timing seems tighter and the choreography finessed.