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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Nick Kimberley's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Anthony Minghella.
Cast: English National Opera, Judith Howarth (Cio-Cio-San), Christine Rice (Suzuki), Edward Gardner (cond)
Description: Edward Gardner conducts Puccini's tragic tale, starring Judith Howarth as Cio-Cio-San and Christine Rice as Suzuki. Sung in English.
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square/Charing Cross 
, Tube / Bus: 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 29, 53, 77a, 88, 91, 139 
Phone: 0871911 0200
Website: www.eno.org
Email: access@eno.org
Love turns to tragedy: Judith Howarth (Butterfly) and Gwyn Hughes Jones (Pinkerton)
When you ask a celebrated film director to stage one of the cornerstones of the operatic repertoire, the last thing you want is timid reticence. What you look for is boldness, colour, vision.
Anthony Minghella's English National Opera production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly is certainly bold and colourful, and it has its visionary moments. The sloping mirror that forms the back of the stage creates some telling split-screen effects, and the images of Butterfly that open and close the opera are heart-breaking in their directness. So far, so good.
This is an opera with everything: a clash of cultures, under-age sex, single motherhood, forced adoption, suicide. Yet Minghella seems reluctant to deliver the story straight, and for every telling detail there are a dozen touches of kitsch. As for having Butterfly's three-year-old son played by a puppet, it is either crass misjudgment or a masterstroke. At least the puppet looks involved, which is rarely the case when the role is taken by an overawed schoolboy.
For this revival, staged by Minghella's wife Carolyn Choa, you sense that so much attention has been lavished on peripherals that the singers have been left to get by with standard issue Puccini-isms.
Conductor David Parry whips the orchestra into a fine frenzy, sometimes overwhelming the voices, but the emotional temperature is slow to rise.
Perhaps the most expressive singing comes from Karen Cargill as Suzuki, Butterfly's maid, which is not quite what Puccini had in mind. As Pinkerton, the American sailor who is Butterfly's downfall, Gwyn Hughes Jones is more abrasive than tender, and at first it is hard to believe that Judith Howarth's Butterfly can have fallen for him.
As her situation gets desperate, though, Howarth locates the intensity that finally hits home, so that Butterfly's freeze-frame suicide seems horribly real.
• Until 8 March (0871 911 0200).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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