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: My Neighbour Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 cartoon My Neighbour Totoro is a hugely beloved film that's totally embedded in Japanese culture, but the popularity of Studio Ghibli films worldwide means any new adaptation has the potential to be a hit anywhere - something the RSC's stage version had already proved to an extent before it opened, with record-breaking advance ticket sales at the Barbican. It still had to live up to those expectations of course, and this Japanese-British co-production sets out the "British" side of that deal from the start, with a visual gag correcting the spelling of "Neighbour" from the American dub of the film. Like the titular massive furry bear/rabbit/owl... thing itself, Tom Morton-Smith's adaptation has to be huge and unwieldy, utterly bizarre, a little bit creepy but strangely lovable. No pressure.

Theatre review: Ravens: Spassky vs. Fisher

You might think that a game of chess would be hard to make a compelling stage story out of, but as Chess has been proving for the last thirty years… you’d be right. But this hasn’t dissuaded playwrighting bear Tom Morton-Smith from giving his own take on the way a board game ended up encapsulating the entire Cold War; instead of fictionalised versions and illicit affairs he goes back to the real people who, like it or not, found themselves representing the entirety of the USSR and USA in Ravens: Spassky vs. Fischer. While the Arms Race and Space Race provided the most direct dick-measuring contest between the two nations, each also attempted to dominate in fields that more obliquely showed off their strengths and values: Movies for America, while Russia had ballet, circus and chess. Boris Spassky (Ronan Raftery) is the latest in a long line of Soviet chess champions, and the first to be in serious danger of losing the title to an American, as former child prodigy Bobby Fischer (Robert Emms) has been climbing up the ranks and is now challenging him at the 1972 World Championship in Reykjavik.

Theatre review: Oppenheimer

Two years ago in the Swan, the RSC had a hit with a revival of A Life of Galileo, which gloried in the enduring enthusiasm of the scientist even as his discoveries edge his life towards tragedy. So it's not too surprising if they now revisit the theme, going straight for the subject of Brecht's metaphor: The development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Tom Morton-Smith's Oppenheimer sees the titular scientist, known to all as Oppie (Perennial Next Big Thing John Heffernan,) start as an enthusiastic, popular physics lecturer at Berkeley, whose students provide him with a ready-made pool of young scientists when a controversial new project comes calling. But long before America's involvement with the war in Europe, Oppie and his friends are concerned about the rise of fascism, and holding Communist Party fundraisers to help fight it.

Theatre review: Everyday Maps for Everyday Use

When the Finborough played host to the Papatango playwrighting competition for the first time last year, they went for an ambitious programme of staging, alongside the winner's month-long run, week-long runs of the other three finalists. This year they've reined things in a bit, with a couple of rehearsed readings of finalists, but full productions for the top two plays, running in repertory. First, the runner-up, Tom Morton-Smith's Everyday Maps for Everyday Use.

The soundtrack as the audience enters is a selection of Bowie's more space travel-fixated songs, as the play is set in Woking, where HG Wells had the aliens first invade in The War of the Worlds, and Morton-Smith's characters' lives, ambitions and sexual inclinations are all in some way or other tied up with Mars; the play follows the various ways the six people's lives intertwine.