Northants, Leics &amp; Rutland

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/4.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg" alt="Harrison Dowzell as Luca in Matthew Bourne's The Car Man" class="wp-image-66584" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/4.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/4.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/4.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Harrison Dowzell as Luca. Photo: Johan Persson</figcaption></figure>



The Car Man is exactly the kind of life-enhancing work of genius you get when you create top-level, serious art that is beautifully accessible, by which I mean that, as anyone who goes to see ballet with any regularity should admit, it&#8217;s not always that easy to follow what&#8217;s happening. The Chalamet Dilemma, let&#8217;s call it. Because, he had a point to some extent when he said in an interview recently that people don&#8217;t really care about ballet and opera (to paraphrase). Sometimes, people don&#8217;t actually care that much because they&#8217;re genres that can be hard to understand (or, at least, we think they will be).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/5.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Ashley-Shaw-Lana-and-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg" alt="Luca and Lana in Matthew Bourne's The Car Man" class="wp-image-66582" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/5.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Ashley-Shaw-Lana-and-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/5.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Ashley-Shaw-Lana-and-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/5.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Ashley-Shaw-Lana-and-Harrison-Dowzell-Luca.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Harrison Dowzell and Ashley Shaq. Photo: Johan Persson</figcaption></figure>



But the beauty of The Car Man specifically is that it uses language we all get: desire, power, jealousy, revenge. It&#8217;s the kind of story we see on our TV screens day in day out, timeless but here interpreted through the exquisite medium of ballet and, by transposing the nineteenth century Seville of Bizet&#8217;s Carmen to 1950s America, we&#8217;re in a place we instantly recognise from the movies and it clicks. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/8.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Jamie-Duncan-Campbell-Vito-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg" alt="Matthew Bourne The Car Man" class="wp-image-66574" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/8.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Jamie-Duncan-Campbell-Vito-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/8.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Jamie-Duncan-Campbell-Vito-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/8.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Jamie-Duncan-Campbell-Vito-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photo: Johan Persson</figcaption></figure>



The set and costume design by Lez Brotherston are reminiscent of films like Grease or Rebel Without A Cause, with life size cars (Cadillacs maybe?), an American diner with faded adverts for Coke and Mobilgas, grease-smeared t-shirts and jeans and swooshy ponytails. It&#8217;s all stuff we recognise and feel connected to and, as the audience take their seats before the show begins, the cast can be seen on the stage, milling about, quietly existing, drawing us naively into their world. 



Celebrating 26 years since its first performance, as well as being a re-telling of Bizet&#8217;s beloved opera Carmen using the original music re-imagined by Terry Davies, the ballet is loosely based on the acclaimed novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain, itself translated for the big screen, fittingly, twice, in 1946 and again in 1981, starring in turn Lana Turner and John Garfield, and Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson. There&#8217;s no shortage of lore in this story. But what Matthew Bourne does so magnificently and uniquely is to play with gender roles and sexuality in a way that ramps up searing tensions and melodrama. Plenty of sweat, engine oil, beer, fighting, cowboys and men in showers are peak gay and The Car Man lays them all on with extra burger sauce. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/6.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg" alt="The Car Man Leonardo McCorkindale as Angelo. Photo: Johan Persson" class="wp-image-66588" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/6.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/6.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/6.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo-and-Company.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Leonardo McCorkindale as Angelo. Photo: Johan Persson</figcaption></figure>



It&#8217;s thrilling, fun, fast-paced and supremely sexy, of course, but it&#8217;s also layered, delving deep into the trauma experienced by the two lead male characters Luca (played by Harrison Dowzell in the performance I saw) and Angelo (Leonardo McCorkindale), in the aftermath of passion, murder, betrayal and incarceration. I have to confess that I do always cry at the ballet, but in this case I wasn&#8217;t expecting to be so overwhelmed by the pathos of Luca literally dancing with his demons, in this case the ghoulish corpse of Dino (Alan Vincent), the man he bludgeoned to death before pinning the murder on his lover Angelo, and by the poignant beauty of a story told entirely through movement, however brutal. Reader, I shed more than a tear. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/9.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg" alt="Leonardo McCorkindale as Angelo and Harrison Dowzell as Luca in The Car Man. Photo: Johan Persson" class="wp-image-66590" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/9.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/9.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/northantsleicsrutland/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2026/06/9.-Matthew-Bournes-THE-CAR-MAN.-Leonardo-McCorkindale-Angelo.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Leonardo McCorkindale as Angelo and Harrison Dowzell as Luca. Photo: Johan Persson</figcaption></figure>



No one comes out of The Car Man looking spotless and Ashley Shaw as Lana is a fireball of repressed energy and passion boiling furiously to the surface, desperate for autonomy as she claws her way out of an unhappy marriage to some sort of power through a Lady Macbeth-esque fall from grace. The ending is both brutal and suitably unfulfilling, as the cycle of murder and betrayal rumbles tragically onward. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-muddy-verdict">THE MUDDY VERDICT</h2>



Good for:&nbsp;a night out with friends who love something gritty to chat about afterwards



Not for:&nbsp;it’s a bit raunchy for young children and is recommended for ages 12+ but I&#8217;d say that might be on the young side. Probably not the ideal story for a romantic night out. 



The Car Man is on at <a href="https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/the-car-man-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Curve Leicester</a> until Sat 20 June, <a href="https://www.new-adventures.net/the-car-man" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">touring the UK</a> until 21 November 2026. 



Words: Emma Galvin. Photos: Johan Persson



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Review: Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man at Curve Leicester

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