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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,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square 
Phone: 0870890 1104
Melodrama and high camp: rapiers flash as Adam Levy as Ramon and Matt Rawle as Zorro clash to the sound of guitars in a spectacularly well-staged fight
Undercover: Zorro has a way with the ladies
More buckle than swash: Sir Bruce Forsyth flamenco dances with his wife Wilnelia at the first night party at Floridita
A new breed of escapist musical, inspired by an American pulp-fiction story and a brace of Hollywood movies, swaggered into town last night, looking as if it might make an original summer holiday attraction.
Set in a world of Spanish settlers and gypsies in primitive California two centuries ago, it offers a seductive combination of high melodrama and fairly high camp, with the pulsating beat of flamenco song and dance that enthuses this guitar-led, dynamically choreographed musical. A traditional boy-fights-to-get-girl scenario is given a fresh twist, since the boy in question dons the disguise of the old movie hero, Zorro.
This literally swinging, high-flying man in a mask, flowing cape and huge earrings borrowed from Lesli Margherita's sultry come-hitherish gipsy Inez, looks distinctly camp and he knows it.
"What must you think?" Matt Rawle's charismatic nonchalantly athletic and self-mocking Diego asks her, when masked and wearing a gaucho-style hat, decorated with feathers better suited to a fast lady.
Stephen Clark's book which he wrote with Helen Edmundson, could do with far more of such comic cuts to lighten the fairytale and romantic melodramatics of the musical's scenario: Diego, sent to study in Spain where he cannot resist falling in with a gypsy group and admiring the thrust of Inez's body, returns to California, which designer Tom Piper pictures as a grim sinister stockade.
Here Diego finds his benevolent king-like father apparently dead and Adam Levy's fury-filled Ramon establishing a reign of terror over the Spanish community in LA. How can he win his lost, true love, Emma Williams's, Luisa whose powerfullydeliveredsongs hanker repetitively for happiness, how too can he end Ramon's tyranny?
It takes, of course, Zorro in mask and cape with more than a few miraculous escape tricks and magic to win through.
Christopher Renshaw's production, in common with Clark's book could increase the campery and make even more sly fun of this hokum, though there is a nicely satirical moment of eaves-dropping on a confession that dramatically leads Zorro to disaster.
A succession of spectacular flying and fighting effects, about which it would be unfair to give away much add to the fun. The best of these make it actually seem as if Zorro escapes by dissolving into thin air or vanishing by a rope. And the final fight to the death between the two men's rapiers' flashing to the clamour of guitars, Zorro almost felled by a giant crucifix and turning the murderous tables again and again, is managed with genuine elan. The Zorro of Mr Rawle, who boasts the best looking teeth on the London stage, can permit himself a victorious smile.
John Cameron's score, wistful and slightly Sondheimian is unexceptional, but the music of the Gypsy Kings steels and helps make the show. In anthems like Freedom and the Fiesta of the finale, a joyful climax of furiously tapping feet and dancing energy is achieved: Here is authentic high energy as a contrast to the fairytale heroics of Zorro in a truly highflying musical.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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