New Adventures has announced the return of Matthew Bourne’s award-winning dance thriller The Car Man, which will embark on an extensive UK tour in 2026.
The tour opens at Curve, Leicester on 15 June 2026 and will visit 16 additional venues over 22 weeks, including a five-week summer season at Sadler’s Wells.
Loosely based on Bizet’s opera Carmen, The Car Man features one of the most thrilling and instantly recognisable scores in the New Adventures repertoire.
The familiar 19th Century Spanish cigarette factory is reimagined as a greasy 1950s garage-diner in the American Mid-West, where the arrival of a handsome stranger shatters the dreams of a small-town community.
Matthew Bourne said: “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 bi-sexual 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 re-visit the hot and steamy town of Harmony USA – the best place to be next Summer!”
The Car Man was first seen in 2000, winning the Evening Standard Award for Musical Event of the Year and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Choreography.
It was last revived in 2022 for the Royal Albert Hall’s 150th anniversary, receiving rave reviews and nightly standing ovations.
This will be the first time The Car Man has toured since 2015.
Directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, the production features music by Terry Davies and Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite (after Bizet’s Carmen), sound by Paul Groothuis, lighting by Chris Davey, and design by Lez Brotherston.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
