Playwright Alexander Galin is here to remind us that there is a dark side to the Olympic dream. Galin's focus in Stars is not London 2012 but Moscow 1980, when the Soviet Bloc attempted to show the world a more human face.

This entailed the removal of some other human faces, those of the city's prostitutes. Thus the lights come up on a grotty dormitory hut in the middle of nowhere - full marks to designer Robyn Wilson - where Anna, Maria, Klara and Laura have been forcibly relocated, with light suitcases and heavy emotional baggage.

It's dextrously directed by Aoife Smyth, with powerful turns from Kate Bowes Renna as raddled, ageing Anna and Beatriz Romilly as the febrile, under-age Maria.

Yet this potentially intriguing piece is always slipping just out of our reach and struggles to hang on to the bronze medal.

Ferdydurke
Bloomsbury Theatre
Gordon Street
WC1H 0AH
*

There's no medal for Ferdydurke, the week's other trip behind the Iron Curtain. This nigh-on incomprehensible satire, adapted from the 1937 work of Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz, is saddled with a terrible translation that groans with misplaced colloquialisms.

• Stars until 3 March (020 7261 9876). Ferdydurke until tomorrow (020 7388 8822).