Matthew Bourne isn’t shy about revisiting his own past. In recent years his Nutcracker, Highland Fling and Swan Lake have all been brought back to vibrant life. Now it’s The Car Man’s turn.

Billed as “Bizet’s Carmen reimagined”, this 2000 creation is Bourne paying tribute to his favourite films by telling a different story. He uses Bizet’s music (as orchestrated by Rodion Shchedrin and augmented by original music from Terry Davies) to pay homage to James M. Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, subject of two terrific Hollywood films and now this hugely enjoyable piece of dance-theatre.

In Bourne’s tight and lucid scenario the action is set in a down-at-heel garage-diner in a sleepy Midwestern American hamlet (Harmony, pop 375) in the early 1960s. Lana, wife of the garage’s owner, and her lover, the drifter Luca, kill her husband Dino and set up the hired help Angelo to take the rap. In the second half, the guilty lovers start to fall apart (and fall out) while the wronged man seeks a bitter and violent revenge. Bourne even adds a bisexual twist to his tale in the person of Luca.

Part film noir and part Grand-Guignol horror – with a dollop of Carry On-style humour – The Car Man reveals a wealth of references (both filmic and balletic) as it tries to play both sides of the comedy-tragedy divide. Sometimes it works startlingly well, at others the jokes (especially those involving the husband) diminish the drama.

The show looks far better at the Wells than at the Old Vic seven years ago. Lez Brotherston’s design concept is fabulous, from dingy garage-diner to tacky nightclub and bleak county jail (Jailhouse Rock, anyone?). Fashions are pure Rebel Without a Cause. The garage setting is cue for much dancing by mechanics and their girlfriends. The men leap on and off vintage cars while thrusting their male muscle, the women chase a good time. As the dance repeatedly tells us, not only is the weather hot and steamy but libidos are too. The choreography is at its best when subtleties of emotion are not called for, yet it doesn’t quite convince when it comes to sex, the couplings more awkward than erotic.

Bourne relies on his dancers to fill in the emotional gaps the dance leaves behind, which the first cast did admirably well. Alan Vincent’s Luca is wonderfully beefy and tough until guilt messily destroys him. Scott Ambler plays the fool as bully Dino, while a superb Michela Meazza, as his wife, combines ballerina grace with the earthiness of a tart. As the “good couple” Rita and Angelo, Kerry Biggin and Richard Winsor exude a sweet innocence until fate has its evil way with them.

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