Hollywood hopefuls recapture youth

Almost a decade after winning an Oscar as the 10-year-old star of movie The Piano, Anna Paquin will be watching the awards ceremony from London this year, where she is starring on stage in This Is Our Youth.

Paquin, still only 19, is appearing alongside two stars of tomorrow in the darkly comic coming-of-age drama, which has another Oscar connection in writer Kenneth Lonergan, who was a nominee in 2001.

The sure-fire star of tomorrow is Hayden Christensen, who will soon be known to millions of cinema-goers as Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones.

But in the play, the performances by Paquin and Christensen are overshadowed by that of Jake Gyllenhaal, who is similarly young, American and talented - but with no big film roles behind him. Yet.

Set in a scruffy one-room Manhattan apartment, This Is Our Youth shines, thanks to the script by relative newcomer Lonergan, whose talent has been leapt upon by theatre and film worlds alike.

With a wicked, original style, his other plays have won a string of awards, and his first foray into film, 2001's You Can Count On Me, earned him an Oscar nomination for best screenplay.

For This Is Our Youth, he creates a tale of young desires and vulnerability played out through three Jewish New Yorkers who are funny and likeable, but also naïve and destructive.

Christensen plays Dennis, a control freak and small-time drug dealer whose father, a famous artist, bought him the apartment where the action takes place.

He cannot resist walking all over Warren, played by Gyllenhaal, Dennis's downtrodden and dopey if well-meaning friend who turns up at his door after being kicked out by his abusive father.

Warren helped himself to $15,000 (£10,500) of his dad's money on his way out, and Dennis persuades him to return it before it is missed - but not before using it to do a few cocaine deals.

Paquin appears as Jessica, the kooky object of Warren's affections who turns out to be just as messed up by her family as the other two are.

It is a sign of quality that a play so serious and contemplative is also so funny.

Lonergan's incisive writing sheds light on the absurdity of that strange ailment, the human condition.

As well as exploring the gaping canyons and gorges of the characters' flaws, the script also uncovers their humorous quirks and foibles.

Much is made of the fact that the play is set in 1982 - but if it were not for a poster of Ronald Reagan that is used as a dartboard, the play could have been about three young New Yorkers at any time during the last 20 years.

But the time-frame does make you wonder what would have become of Dennis, Warren and Jessica, who would have been middle-aged by 2002.

One thing is for sure - they would not have been living happily ever after.

This Is Our Youth is currently on at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End.