The Car Man will be touring 17 venues around the UK, starting in Leicester
The show is coming to the Curve theatre for a week in June 2026
The Curve theatre in Leicester has been picked to launch a new tour of choreographer Matthew Bourne’s award-winning dance thriller The Car Man.
The ballet show will be touring 17 UK venues over 22 weeks next year and it will open at the Curve theatre on Monday, June 15, 2026.
Loosely based on Bizet’s opera Carmen, The Car Man has a “thrilling and instantly recognisable score”. The setting has been shifted from the 19th-century Spanish cigarette factory in the opera to a greasy 1950s diner in the American Midwest, “where the dreams and passions of a small town are shattered by the arrival of a handsome and enigmatic stranger”.
Theatre company New Adventures said the show told the story of the town’s inhabitants who, “fuelled by heat and desire”, are “driven into an unstoppable spiral of greed, lust, betrayal and revenge”.
Matthew Bourne said of the show: “I never dreamed when we created this show at the beginning of the new millennium that it would still be around, thrilling audiences, 25 years later.
“Inspired by vintage movie film noir classics, it holds a unique and special place in the New Adventures repertory as the only piece based on an opera and possibly the first ballet to feature a bisexual anti-hero.
“I’m particularly happy that we are taking the show on the road again after more than 10 years and I can’t wait to revisit the hot and steamy town of Harmony USA – the best place to be next summer.”
After it was first put on in 2000, The Car Man won the Evening Standard Award for Musical Event of the Year and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Choreography. It was last seen in a revival for the Royal Albert Hall’s 150th birthday in 2022.
This will be the first time The Car Man has toured since 2015.
The show is directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, who, in 2007, was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from De Montfort University in Leicester.
The Curve shows will run from Monday, June 15, to Saturday, June 20, and tickets will go on sale via the Curve website on Friday, November 14. They will also be available by calling the box office from November 14 onwards on 0116 242 3595, or by visiting the box office at the theatre in Rutland Street, Leicester city centre.
