Theatre review: The Earthworks

Like the black holes that form in the Large Hadron Collider, shows in the Young Vic's Clare space are small in scale, and are pretty much over as soon as they've opened. The latest of these is Tom Morton-Smith's The Earthworks which takes place on the night before the Collider's official opening in 2008 - not at CERN itself, but in a Geneva hotel where various interested parties are staying. Most are asleep because they've got work to do in the morning, but journalist Clare (Natalie Dew) is up late in the hotel bar: The online science correspondent for a broadsheet, her actual speciality is biology, and she's being kept awake by wanting to understand the physics enough to write a proper article about it, not just rehash a press release like usual.

Theatre review: Jam

In Matt Parvin’s first full-length play Jam, Bella Soroush (Jasmine Hyde) is a teacher at one of the high schools in a rural part of the South West. She used to teach at the other local school until an incident with a pupil, Kane McCarthy, ten years earlier. It was an event that scarred her and nearly ended her career, but she got back on track, and is alone at her new school one night, marking papers when Kane (Harry Melling) breaks in with a baseball bat. He says he isn’t going to harm her and she lets him have his say, but she’s clearly still afraid and no wonder: A chaotic presence at 13, with ADHD, dyslexia and an obsession with elaborate pranks, he still seems volatile at 23. He says he’s returned now because he’s got a brain tumour and has been given six months to live, and wants to tie up loose ends in his life; his story is detailed but Bella isn’t quite prepared to accept it isn’t a new and particularly dark practical joke.