And I utterly adore this new show.It’s done cheaply, and there’s no disguising that: the set is basic. But Hildegard Bechtler’s response to a zero design budget is comparatively stylish; and Bunyan is in any case a piece that would be smothered by too sumptuous a packaging. Francesca Zambello’s track record for gutsy showmanship (remember her Covent Garden Billy Budd, her Earls Court Tosca?) lives on in a bold, big-gestured manner that cuts through the less manageable eccentricities of Auden’s text. And although that involves some dilution of imagery – in, for example, the opening chorus which is meant to be a group of trees(!) arguing the merits of progress, but becomes merely a historic pageant of the chattering classes – I can understand why she does it.The cast is largely British, which means dubious mid-Western accents, and the diction could collectively be better (it takes a lot of work to make Auden’s jokes register). But there’s a real company spirit in this show, which lives up to Britten’s expectation of a good, strong chorus and a quick turnover of characterful cameos Susan Gritton steals all hearts as Bunyan’s daughter Tiny.

Peter Coleman-Wright negotiates the potential banalities of the ballad-singing Narrator with panache. Kenneth Cranham speaks the offstage words of Bunyan with the all-American gravitas of an inaugural address. And there are two small but show-stopping routines from the telegraph boy, Henry Moss – a newcomer whose comic talents I flagged in this column a few weeks ago.Altogether, this is exactly what the Royal Opera should be doing in its current, straitened circumstances; and it has exactly the right conductor in Richard Hickox, whose sympathetic but unsentimental reading of the score touches its inner nerve Mine too. The real star here, though, is the piece itself: endlessly fascinating in the way it begs and equally resists comparison with other stage works of its time. It also reads like an ideas book for so much that was to follow in Britten’s own career, from the chorus-writing in Peter Grimes to the voice of God in Noyes Fludde. And if nothing else, it writes large the capacity Britten revealed in his cabaret songs for letting down a bit of hair.

As someone (Michael Berkeley) said to me on Wednesday: “With a piece, he could have been a popular composer.” Too damn right.Britten’s “popularity” largely resides in his work for children. Its disarming synthesis of innocence and sophistication has often been imitated, never bettered; and certainly not in the new children’s opera Joe Carpenter & Son, which premiered at Rochester last weekend. I was drawn to it by the involvement of two of the old Britten crowd, the baritone Benjamin Luxon (who directed) and the harpist Osian Ellis (who appeared with an ensemble of distinguished players, moonlighting as the Brandenburg Ensemble) But it wasn’t good. Ken Roberts’s score was unmemorable in a breezy West End way; and Graham Clarke’s rewrite of the Nativity in rhyming couplets was, at best, cute. In the dismal chill of Rochester Cathedral it was little comfort.

Less joy.’Bunyan’, Shaftesbury, W1 (0171 304 4000) Mon & Wed; King’s Lynn Corn Exchange (01553 764864) Fri & Sat.. James Bond isn’t really a character: he’s a repertoire of sophisticated moves, most of which have become irretrievably naff. Who, for instance – apart from second- hand car salesmen – still has a gold cigarette lighter? Earlier incumbents of the role devised strategies to cope with this shallowness: Sean Connery turned on the sleaze, Roger Moore fizzed with knowing fruitiness. Pierce Brosnan’s conservative incarnation plumps instead for an air of polite apology As a result, he becomes marginal to his own adventures. In Tomorrow Never Dies (12), Roger Spottiswoode knows that his promiscuous, unflappable hero has become ludicrous, and – for fear of looking stupid – is forced to signal this by making jokes at the expense of Bond’s promiscuity and unflappability. But he also has to rely on these as the distinguishing trademarks of the series. Without the shaken Martinis and the tacky innuendo (“You must be a cunning linguist,” quips Samantha Bond’s Moneypenny), 007 is nothing but a number – which creates terrific problems for anyone trying to update him.
Spottiswoode does his best to surround Bond with bits of Nineties zeitgeist – Polaris missiles and cat-fancying Bloefelds have given way to IT and media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce, delivering every line as if on the point of orgasm).

Unlike Donald Pleasance, Pryce doesn’t dream of blowing up the world, he just wants exclusive rights to broadcast his rolling news channel to it. A very modern megalomania – immeasurably more contemporary than Bond’s eternal delight in remote-control cars with bazooka add-ons, which remains wholly unreconstructed. Can you imagine the guy actually knowing about the Internet? Or Aids?A braver option would have been complete reinvention – if Tim Burton can resurrect Batman as a lonely depressive with a rubber fetish, why can’t Bond confront his own brutal emptiness? Why can’t we see him as an ageing sadist trying to rediscover Cold War certainties in the bottom of a Martini glass? Instead, Spottiswoode serves up a glutinous mix of pastiche and parody, without seeming to know whether he’s recycling or debunking his cliches.What the movie does with its women – sorry, the “girls” – is a useful index on this lack of direction. As Wai Lin, kick-ass Hong Kong action heroine, Michelle Yeoh takes the lead in a riproaring, Thai-set set-piece, the only genuinely exciting action sequence. It’s a deliberate attempt to inject some Jackie Chan-style kinetics into the franchise, but Yeoh’s witty acrobatics only serve to point up Bond’s lumbering complacency. 007 is much more at home with Teri Hatcher’s Paris Carver, a feathered femme who in the old days would have been called something like Pudenda Beaucoup.