It's certainly not Madam Butterfly — which is why Olga Neuwirth’s Lost Highway is playing not at the Coliseum but at the Young Vic. In fact it is the first of two co-productions between ENO and the Young Vic, enabling the former both to grapple with some cutting-edge multi-media work and to attract the “buzzy” young crowd widely deemed to be the salvation of opera.

Lost Highway is based on the 1997 David Lynch film and endeavours to recreate the surreal, lurid, raunchy world of that psychological thriller. Fusing video, dialogue and music, both live (a 27-piece ensemble ably conducted by Baldur Brönnimann and pre-recorded electronics), Neuwirth captures the menace lurking round every corner.

The plot, weaving reality and fantasy, sometimes confuses the characters as much as the audience. The condition they are suffering from is described by Lynch as a “psychogenic fugue”: a state so traumatic that they assume another identity to escape.

Diane Paulus’s production, designed by Riccardo Hernandez, locates the action either on a highway running right across the stage or in a glass-fronted apartment, its floors linked by a spiral staircase. Complementing this is the nightmarish video work of Philip Bussmann, its shapes and characters constantly morphing, projected on four screens above the audience seated in the round.

One of the many explicit sex scenes deploys the instrumental forces to fine effect — a mouth organ making an eloquent contribution. Elsewhere the musical substance is thinner than the visuals. Neuwirth’s word-setting leaves something to be desired too: the banality of the sung phrases is matched only by that of the libretto (by Elfriede Jelinek and Neuwirth herself). A good deal, however, is spoken by actors to better effect.

Of the singers, Valerie MacCarthy (Renée/Alice) was outstanding. But it will be difficult to forget David Moss’s assault on a biker caught smoking in a garage. Firing off volleys of plosives and falsetto screams, he floors the offender with his virtuoso delivery.

Until 11 April, 0871 911 0200.