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: City of Glass

It's a week of adaptations within adaptations - last night's Obsession was an English translation of a Dutch stage adaptation of a film adaptation of a novel, and tonight City of Glass is Duncan Macmillan's version not just of Paul Auster's novel, but also specifically of Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli's graphic novel adaptation of the story. Which is itself full of retellings of itself, and who exactly is narrating it is very much up for discussion. To wit, the lead character of Daniel Quinn is played simultaneously by two actors: Chris New and Mark Edel-Hunt occasionally appear on stage together but mostly alternate scenes, swapping places during blackouts. In fact, given how low the lighting is, I imagine people sitting quite far from the stage would have taken a while to realise this was happening, as despite the two men not looking much alike, even from the third row of the stalls it sometimes took a moment to be sure which one was on stage.

Theatre review: The American Plan

It's always nice when a play caters to my interests right from the start, like The American Plan does by opening with Luke Allen-Gale climbing out of a lake in bathing trunks, soaking wet. He eventually puts his clothes back on but Richard Greenberg's play soon compensates in other ways. It's July 1960 and Nick (Allen-Gale) is the son of an old wealthy New York family, holidaying with friends in the Catskills. Finding the resort's full schedule of "fun" oppressive, he swims across the lake to an odd-looking house owned by Eva (Diana Quick,) a Jewish refugee who escaped Germany on the last ship out, before her husband came up with a useful but unexciting invention that made their fortune. Nick is captivated by Eva's daughter Lili (Emily Taaffe,) a compulsive fantasist who enjoys teasing him with lies like how her late father's mysterious invention was a reversible condom.

Theatre review: Chariots of Fire

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I seem to be having a run (ha!) of these at the moment. This one doesn't open to professional critics until next week.

I didn't know what to expect from Chariots of Fire: On the one hand there's an exciting creative team, with Mike Bartlett adapting the film for the stage, Edward Hall directing and Miriam Buether doing one of her complete redesigns of a space, here turning Hampstead Theatre into an in-the-round, miniature athletics stadium. On the other hand, the project itself seems overly safe and cynical: An Olympic story in an Olympic year, with a double helping of nostalgia - for the 1920s when the story is set, and for the much-loved 1981 film. The publicity even reassures us that yes, the show does feature the iconic Vangelis theme music. The whole thing seems such a safe bet that a West End transfer was announced before it had even started previewing. So how will the story of two rival runners on the same team, a Jewish Englishman and a Christian Scotsman, translate to the stage?