Bizet's Carmen Changes Sex, Seville Moves Stateside in London

Georges Bizet's``Carmen'' has rarely had such a complete makeover. The heroine is transformed into a car mechanic, and 19th-century Seville is replaced with a 1960s Midwest town called Harmony.

It has a population of 375 and sometimes it seems as though they're all on stage at once in ``The Car Man,'' choreographer Matthew Bourne's dance version at London's Sadler's Wells.

The show scraps the cigar factory in favor of a diner and garage. The music is recognizably drawn from Bizet by Terry Davies and adds an original ``Carmen Suite'' by Rodion Shchedrin, that pads it out in ways not always to its advantage.

By the time Bourne's company, New Adventures, starts to dance, we have already met nearly all the characters and gleaned their place in the action: Don't be late because there's a play going on here before there's a ballet.

The atmosphere is authentic. An acetylene torch sends sparks across the workshop, a girl in the diner is talking on the telephone while another is writing the Blue Plate Special on a blackboard. The men are believably crawling onto and under the cars they are fixing and simultaneously posturing for the women.

``The Car Man'' is to ``Carmen'' not quite what ``West Side Story'' was to ``Romeo and Juliet.'' The sex change for Carmen explains a lot. Irresistible to both sexes, the new mechanic cuts a swathe through the town, bedding his boss's wife Lana without difficulty and then, in an excitingly choreographed fight, accidentally killing her husband.

Sinewy

The cast includes Gemma Payne, whose sinewy dancing as Lana is matched by her acting skills. Bourne gives his cast some quick changes of mood and emotion.

There are some problems. The second-half's plot doesn't really hang together, and a secondary story of an innocent teenager in love is dramatically incoherent.

Still, Harmony is, like Seville, hot and sultry, a lot of beer is drunk, there's a lot of sex and fighting. Bourne is good at translating all of that into thrilling dance that owes much to choreographers Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp, while it remains somehow entirely his own.

``The Car Man'' is at Sadler's Wells, London, though Aug. 5 and then tours the U.K. through November. Details on the New Adventures Web site: http://www.new-adventures.net . Information:

May not be suitable for under 12s

Strobe lighting is used in this performance