On September 19, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful physics experiment ever built, was shut down. A magnet problem had caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak into the 27 km-long LHC tunnel, which runs under the Franco-Swiss border. This is the moment in time that Shaun McCarthy selected for his compact play Collider, which was chosen by Katie Read as the first production for her newly founded Oxford Saturday Matinee Club.

As Collider opens, Dr Cydney Lavelle (Holly King), a key scientist working on the LHC experiment, is meeting American evangelist Pastor Nathanial Goodman (James Card, pictured). In the background, wild-haired physicist Vivien Houghton (Steve Hay) obsessively practises a juggling act with some apples. Lavelle is stressed – the experiment is already showing signs of going wrong – and the meeting with Pastor Goodman is distinctly prickly.

Things get much more entertainingly complicated when the Pastor’s wife Martha (Amy Enticknap) appears: “Ah thought everybaddy heer would be real geeky,” she exclaims, to Lavelle’s evident annoyance. With her gyrating body and curve-hugging clothes, she is not the obvious wife for a pastor from North Carolina.

Relationships collide, as problems with the Collider itself mount up. McCarthy writes well, and has a good ear for a telling one-liner. If his play has a fault, it’s that he tackles too many issues almost simultaneously: male chauvinism, racism, science versus religion, transparency, world poverty, and – of course – sex, they all get an airing during Collider’s one-hour running time. But that’s so much better than a single point, hammered home time and time again. Above all, McCarthy is extremely good at moving relationships in unexpected directions, with humour.

The play was very well served by the professional cast, working under Katie Read’s direction. Using only simple props, and no stage lighting, atmosphere and characterisations were expertly established. Altogether, the production was an auspicious start for this new venture.