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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,
Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Robert Lepage.
Cast: The Royal Opera, Carl Fillion (des), Thomas Ades (cond), Sally Matthews (Anne Trulove), Charles Castronovo (Tom Rakewell), John Relyea (Nick Shadow), Kathleen Wilkinson (Mother Goose), Patricia Bardon (Baba The Turk), Darren Jeffery (Trulove), Peter Hoare (Sellem), Peter Bronder (Sellem, Jul 7)
Description: Stravinsky's tale of a wide-eyed country boy and the big city's temptations is given a modern twist as Robert Lepage's production sets the story in 1950s Hollywood and the world of movies and television. With Charles Castronovo as Tom Rakewell, Sally Matthews as Anne Trulove and John Relyea as Nick Shadow. Conducted by Thomas Ades and sung in English with surtitles.
Trains: Tube: Covent Garden 
Phone: 0207304 4000
Website: www.roh.org.uk
Email: onlinebooking@roh.org.uk
Extra info: Air Conditioning, Food
Poignant lovers: Charles Castronovo as Tom Rakewell and Sally Mathews as Anne Trulove
Updating the setting of an opera is always a gamble: will the relocation reveal more than it obscures? Robert Lepage's production of Stravinsky's Rake's Progress (which originated at La Monnaie, Brussels, and is shared with three other houses but is new to Covent Garden) boasts such an ingenious conceit as to annihilate quibbles.
The progress of the rake in the scenario devised by Auden and Kallman for Stravinsky is a Hogarthian one from country house to fashionable Georgian London to Bedlam. In Lepage's version, Tom, the rake, is transformed by the diabolic Nick Shadow into a Hollywood star.
The machine of which Tom dreams, capable of miracles for the betterment of mankind, turns out to be an early television set (doubling as a bread machine). When the glitter fades and Tom is bankrupted by his speculative enterprise, he is confronted by Shadow in a Vegas-style Last Chance Saloon.
The parallels are perfect and in terms of the themes of corruption by celebrity, rampant speculation and infidelity, the moral is arguably more clearly drawn than in the original scenario. Certainly Lepage, creating the production with Ex Machina of Quebec, brings out the resonances of the American domiciles of Stravinsky (who was obsessed by the new medium of the television, wishing to write an opera for it), Auden and Kallman, and very wittily he does it, too.
No less of an achievement is the way the production taps the vein of melancholy that provides the work's undertow. In this Lepage is aided by the marvellously empathetic conducting of Thomas Adès, who consistently finds the tender, elegiac quality too often absent in readings of this brilliant neoclassical pastiche.
Adès, too, is fortunate to have a terrific cast. Charles Castronovo's Tom Rakewell has a Handelian's command of tonal nuance, while Sally Matthews soars ecstatically as his devoted Anne Trulove. Their final scene in the asylum is deeply poignant.
John Relyea contributes a splendidly villainous Nick Shadow, Patricia Bardon a colourful Baba the Turk and Darren Jeffrey a sterling Trulove. Both dramatically and musically this is a genuinely revelatory Rake.
Until 18 July. Information: 020 7304 4000, www.roh.org.uk.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
