- November 2025
Far far away, in a small cottage named Chequers, Jack Beanstalk and his mum live a humble life where money is tight. To make ends meet, Jack sells his beloved cow Daisy in Bridgetown in exchange for five ‘magic’ beans from the renowned Evil Bean Merchant. His mother is devastated at the trade-off, but knows all about mistakes, having bean there done that. But fear not! Jack is distracted from this woe after meeting the love of his life, Jill, who will follow him to the ends of the earth…
… and indeed up a beanstalk. Join Jack and Jill as they navigate the high-altitude world of an insecure Giant, Claudia Winkleman, a golden goose and Guinness the Harp and follow them around the long winding corridors of Castle Mound. Wait why is the Evil Bean Merchant here, again?
Come and watch this year’s unmissable festive delight featuring love, adventure and... beans: the CUADC/Footlights Pantomime 2025: Jack and the Beanstalk!
- November 2025
This term, DNA takes over the Corpus Playroom as the Week 6 Freshers Late Show. Dark, gripping, and razor-sharp, this production dives into the unsettling world of teenage complicity and the spiralling consequences of one terrible decision.
Written by Dennis Kelly, DNA follows a group of teenagers who commit a violent act—and then attempt to cover it up. As guilt and fear take hold, the group fractures, revealing shifting power dynamics, moral ambiguity, and the terrifying ease with which truth can be manipulated. Tense, fast-paced, and disturbingly funny, DNA is a chilling exploration of peer pressure, group psychology, and the thin line between order and chaos.
- November 2025
"Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library... what should I do?"
Spider’s Web comes to life at the ADC Theatre as the Freshers’ Play for Week 6. Directed, produced, and performed entirely by first-year students, this production offers a fresh and energetic take on Agatha Christie's tangled tale of secrets, deception, and unexpected twists. Prepare for an evening of sharp wit, classic intrigue, and a dash of farcical chaos.
The play follows Clarissa Hailsham-Brown, the imaginative wife of a diplomat, who stumbles into a murder scene and decides to cover it up—only to find the situation slipping rapidly out of her control. Part mystery, part comedy, the play is a perfect showcase of Christie’s flair for suspense with a light-hearted twist.
- November 2025
This term, Ruckus in the Garden bursts onto the Corpus Playroom stage as the Main Show for Week 6, brought to life by a vibrant cast and creative team of freshers. Expect a high-energy, sharply funny production that blends teenage chaos with a touch of Shakespearean mischief.
Written by David Farr, Ruckus in the Garden is a fast-paced exploration of teenage life, following two rival schools—Riverdale Comprehensive and St. Nectan's Grant Maintained—on a disastrous school trip to the idyllic garden of Cecil Fortescue. As tensions rise and old grudges flare, magical forces intervene, drawing inspiration from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to spark unexpected romance, comic confusion, and total mayhem.
- November 2025
‘And yet there’s something perversely beautiful about it. Something so grotesquely feminine about pain.'
Drawing on verbatim testimonies from people living with endometriosis, PCOS and adenomyosis, ‘just RED’ is a one person play that explores a life lived with chronic pain. Getting out of bed. Endless empty pill packets. Sex with men who could only dream of understanding how the female body works.
Cynicism and dark humour can only get you so far.
- November 2025
A Bright Room Called Day follows a group of artists and activists in 1930s Germany, as they grapple with the rise of fascism around them. Punctuating this narrative are "interruptions" from Zillah: an activist who has moved from the US to Berlin during the Reagan administration, and is studying the rise of the Nazis. Tony Kushner (author of Angels In America, among other plays) combines poetry, fantasy, and historical fiction, to create a piece as compelling as it is experimental.
- October 2025
1994, Grimley. Ten years after height of the Miners' Strike, talented musician Gloria returns to her hometown under orders from her higher-ups. All the while, the local brass band, struggling for funds, makes the decision to go out on a bang with one last hurrah on the competition circuit. As circumstances become increasingly bleak, and music takes an increasingly central role in the lives of the band members, will the band prevail against the odds to reach the grand final? Based on the classic 1996 film of the same name, Brassed Off, which will be performed with a live band, is a moving portrait of life during the Thatcher years and testament to the fact that music really couldn’t matter more.
- October 2025
Because in stories things usually turn out the way the author wants them to; and in real life, they don’t…always
Marrying for money often doesn’t go to plan. It certainly hasn’t for faded tennis star Tony Wendice as he believes his wife will ultimately divorce him for her on-off lover, a charming crime writer. For Tony loosing his wife would be catastrophic, not because he loves her but her fortune. He consequently orchestrates a devious plot to have her killed. On paper it’s the perfect murder.
Will the wits of a shrewd inspector and a prolific crime writer manage to unveil Tony’s malicious scheme before it’s too late?
This amateur production of “Dial ‘M’ for Murder” is presented by arrangement with Concord
Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk
- August 2025
“I don’t want to die with my skull pokin’ out. What if the angels all laugh at me?”
Clay Hudson is a stone-cold vigilante. He's widely known for hunting down guilty men and sending them back to the law.
Wyatt is an incredibly guilty man.
Neither of them would choose to be stuck at the bottom of a well together, one cold night in 1860s Nevada, but life has a funny way of happening downwards sometimes. There’s nothing to do but wait for dawn and pray someone will come by with a ladder.
...
They find other things to do.
Two Cowboys Get Stuck In A Well is an exploration of survival, softness, and Old Western masculinity. Saving the day makes for a cool story- but when the story has run out, that loner cowboy still has to confront who he is. Introspection's a tricky game with blood under your nails.
Now in Camden for your viewing delight! We just can't keep these boys out of their favourite well!
- August 2025
“Chicks before dicks, bros before hoes…girl time before heinous crime!”
Penelope is back...and more fabulous than ever.
Penelope Quadrangle has one best friend in the entire world: Natalie. Sure, she doesn’t talk much, or invite Penelope to her birthday drinks, and might be a serial killer, but they’ve been best friends since high school, and never quite grew out of it.
And then there’s her next-door neighbour Bridget, who insists on trying to be friends, and absolutely believes that Penelope is lonely. She’s not. In fact, she has a thriving social life which includes going on coffee dates every single week in her favourite middle-class café.
But when she personally witnesses Natalie brutally murder a client at their workplace, priority number one is make sure she isn't next. As she attempts her first ever friend break-up, conversations with Bridget begin to pick apart Penelope’s ideas on what a friend really is. Shouldn’t friends be there for one another, even if it means hiding a body? And would she frame Bridget to protect herself from her own best friend?
If Penelope is one thing, it’s loyal. (And extremely well dressed. And absolutely, definitely, not lonely.)
- May 2025
"After traversing about a mile of trenches… we arrived at the entrance of a long tunnel which we entered and, proceeding almost to the other end of it, made ourselves comfortable and awaited the signal… Our guns had been silent almost all night… but at 5.30 the barrage was opened up. Even down in the tunnel, which was close to 60 feet deep, the sound was like a vast roll of thunder. We hurried out and I do not think I shall ever forget the sight which met our eyes as we reached the lip of the crater into which the tunnel ran.”
-Sergeant Harold Panabaker, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery
Set in real time, this new play by William Lloyd tells the evocative story of three Canadian students in the First World War in the hour leading up to the monumental Battle of Vimy Ridge.
- May 2025
'Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all for Mephistopheles'
Doctor Faustus is the best academic of her generation, but she has grown frustrated with studying theology and arithmetic. As she stumbles deeper and deeper into black magic, she starts to form a strange bond with the demon under her control, Mephistopheles. The two wreak havoc across Europe, and yet Faustus is consistently reminded that in exchange for power over Mephistopheles, she has sold her own soul...
Come and watch this dark-academia tragedy, and be enveloped in chaos.
- March 2025
Jamie New is Sixteen, and wants to be a drag queen. When he decides that he wants to go to Prom in a dress, he’s met with a blunt refusal. Faced with relentless bullying at school, and a turbulent home environment, there are challenges at every turn. However, supported by best friend Pritti, and a cast of vibrant characters met along the way, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is ultimately a catchy, glitzy, touching, and timely story of self-expression in the face of stigma.
- March 2025
"Vera. Vera Stark. Mmmm. She was beautiful. And a damn good actress. A lot of folks don't know that."
The Golden Age of Hollywood had many faces grace its screens. Meet Vera Stark, an African-American maid who found her way into the movies of 1930s Hollywood through her employer, Gloria Mitchell. Both employer and employee land roles in upcoming hit ‘The Belle of New Orleans’ that seems to be a promising beginning for Vera Stark but what happens to her as the years go on?
Vera’s character was inspired by Thersea Harris, one of the many faces that have faded into the background of history. This witty satire combines screwball comedy and academic scrutiny to pull together a discussion about how Hollywood's racial politics shaped not just careers, but entire lives.
- February 2025
Féadfaidh beirt, gan beann ar a ngnéas, conradh pósta a dhéanamh de réir dlí
Based on interviews by the journalist Charlie Bird, Colin Murphy’s documentary drama charts the arc of the fight for legal gay marriage in Ireland culminating in the historic 2015 vote. Watch as ‘The Yes Equality Office’ navigate their campaign for marriage equality through the highs and lows of political referendum. Interwoven with personal stories of those affected, this play not only challenges the audience’s interpretation of modern history but examines the experience of LGBTQ+ youth.
“There's a million in the middle - and they might go either way.”
- January–February 2025
Back from its Edinburgh Fringe run, Desert Thirsts and Jerusalem Winds is coming to Cambridge! Escape to 1920s Jerusalem and follow the wanderlust of reporter Leopold Weiss. What was meant to be a holiday turns into an adventure across the Middle East searching for unity with destiny. Take leap after leap with this daring Austrian student as he blags his way to the most prestigious newspapers, risks death in the Nufud desert and dissects the political and spiritual issues of East and West.
- November 2024
A long time ago in a kingdom far far away, Snow White is celebrating her eighteenth birthday surrounded by bags of dirty washing. With Dame Trudy Wench at her side, she makes sure that the palace is spick and span for Queen Grismerelda and her handsome son Prince Charming.
That is until Snow is banished into the Fantasy Forest, all thanks to the Magic Mirror, with nowhere to go and no pennies to her name. Join her, Trudy, Grismerelda, Prince Charming, Hemingway the Huntsman and the Stardom Seven as the magical story unfolds in the fairest panto of them all!
Don't miss this year's CUADC/Footlights Pantomime: Snow White!
This production will contain innuendo and political humour. While the content is suitable for all ages, it may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Parental discretion is strongly encouraged.
- November 2024
CUADC Freshers' Play
In a remote area of the UK, where nothing ever happens, a group of teenagers share a safe house for LGBT+ young people. The group must decide how they commemorate an attack on queer people that happened in a country far away.
How do you take to the streets and protest if you're not ready to show the world who you are?
Dungeness is a funny, uplifting and moving play about being yourself.
This production is suitable for ages 14 and over.
- November 2024
CUADC Freshers' Play
Welcome to the tech rehearsal. Around you, a company of fourteen is engaged in the very peculiar task of creating a new play.
Take a seat next to the sound designer as he mixes cues. Eavesdrop on backstage gossip as it happens in real time. And watch the director struggle to contain the uncontainable...
10 out of 12 is a wry and absorbing look at how work forms and deforms us.
This production is suitable for ages 12 and over.
This amateur production of “10 Out of 12” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk
- November 2024
CUADC Freshers' Play
Left quad. Right quad. Lunge. A girls indoor soccer team warms up.
From the safety of their suburban stretch circle, the team navigate big questions and wage tiny battles with all the vim and vigor of a pack of adolescent warriors.
The Wolves is a portrait of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for nine girls who just want to score some goals.
This production is suitable for ages 14 and over.
This amateur production of “The Wolves” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk
- November 2024
Can we ever control how we feel?
Are our feelings an emotional or physical sensation?
Are love and sadness anything more than a chemical reaction?
Lucy Prebble’s gripping play "The Effect" delves into the lives of four individuals involved in a clinical trial for a potent new antidepressant, RLU37. Doctors Lorna and Toby, once lovers, find themselves in a heated scientific debate about ethics and the extent to which we should seek to manage human emotion. Volunteers Connie and Tristan quickly find themselves ensnared in a turbulent love affair where every developing affection is tarnished and they question if their love is true, or simply a side effect. This expansive and exhilarating play willingly asks us a multitude of questions, but does it provide the answers?
- October 2024
"I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me no eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom.”
August Wilson's critically acclaimed Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play Fences has often been described as one of the most moving and accurate portrayals of the black family. Meet Troy Maxson, a disillusioned sanitation worker who has bitterly moved on from the days of his youth where he used to play in the Negro Baseball League. Wilson explores the battle between ruthless pragmatism and hope dividing the Maxson family living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as Troy is willing to tear down the dreams of his wife Rose and son Cory who aspires to one day follow in his father's footsteps in search of sporting acclaim with hopes of becoming professional football player. There is no line Troy is unwilling to cross.
- August 2024
On a cold Moscow night in 1925, a stray dog is lured to the laboratory of a rich and eccentric professor, where his endocrine system is replaced with that of a recently deceased man. As the dog morphs into an increasingly human creature, the professor's hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare. The creature's interest in revolutionary values wars with the traditional views of the professor, the housing committee banging at his door to divide up his flat for increased occupancy. A black comedy based on the work of Kiev-born author Mikhail Bulgakov (most famous for 'The Master and Margarita'), 'Heart of a Dog' brings a cult Soviet satire for the first time to the English stage.
- August 2024
After a sold out run and a 5 star review, The Book of Margery Kempe is coming to London!
‘I may be a creature, but I am God’s creature!’
Margery Kempe is a normal housewife. She has fourteen children, a useless husband, and no education. But God has chosen her for a very special purpose. She’s been given the gift of tears, and she’s going to make sure you hear them.
As Margery’s raucous and ravishing visions of God begin to derail her life, she starts to attract more and more attention. And soon she’s on trial for heresy. But Margery won’t be quiet, and the visions won’t stop. In fact, they’re becoming more intense.
In this fast-paced, time travelling retelling of the autobiography of one of the Middle Age’s most incredible women, Margery takes to the stage to give us her life in her own words – tears and all.
'Captivating'
'Effortlessly witty'
'The epitome of what [...] student theatre strives to be'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, Varsity
- June 2024
CUADC EDINBURGH FRINGE SHOW 2024
They’re married. They just don’t know it yet. But this isn’t Vegas. It’s Slough…
Awoken by her birth control alarm in a messy hotel room, Poppy finds herself naked next to her ex who isn't really her ex, Freddie. The two struggle to piece together the events of the night before, gradually remembering the details until they reach the horrifying revelation that they are married. Sounds pretty rock-n-roll, right? But this isn't Vegas, this is a BnB in Slough. Stuck together in the honeymoon suite, Poppy and Freddie are forced to confront what went wrong between them and reconcile the differences that once forced them apart and, crucially, decide whether or not to get an annulment. Poppy and Freddie have an hour until they need to check out. What happens when a Scouser and a Kentish Maid wake up married? You'll have to wait and see...
FRINGE TICKETS: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/vegas
- May 2024
“While our eyes wait to see the final destined day, we must call no mortal happy until he has crossed life's border free from pain”.
A plague is destroying Thebes. Oedipus the King, renowned for his intellect and benevolence, vows to locate the source of corruption. As he traces the threads of pollution, he finds himself unknowingly entangled in an incriminating web and he must confront the fact that the truth lies a little too close to home. Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus Tyrannus, explores issues of identity, the limits of human knowledge and the fickleness of fortune. This new adaptation seeks to blend traditional Greek elements with contemporary styles in a liminal and seemingly timeless space.
- May 2024
There's my train - Good-bye.
Two strangers' chance encounter, or two lovers' final goodbye: two lives intersecting at Milford Junction station as the 5:43 train departs from the platform.
Still Life by Noël Coward is a deeply touching romance about a fleeting yet tentatively genuine love that provided the basis for the hit movie Brief Encounter in 1945. After meeting and falling in love at a suburban rail station, Alec and Laura meet every Thursday in the refreshment room over tea, debating between respectability or love, and some sentimental moments transpire before they must decide whether to take that leap in the dark.
A poignant tale of forbidden love, polite apologies, and a life left behind.
- May 2024
'The Palace' cabaret club, Berlin, sometime in the late 1920s. A drag performer, their faded mother, the controlling stepfather, a preacher who lives in the basement, a doorman and a patron.
This radical new adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 'Salomé' tells the biblical story in place we've never seen it before as cabaret performer Salomé struggles to maintain her independence in an environment controlled by sex, seeking salvation in the baptist preacher Jonathan, only to be scorned as a "child of Sodom".
A visceral and gut-wrenching tragedy which explores the depths of rejection and fetishisation as queer person.
- March 2024
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd...
- February 2024
'Place like this - you know this - place like this gets in your blood. Once it's in your blood, you can't get it out.'
One night under Cardiff skies, four lost souls go searching for answers. After dark, when the city is quiet, their paths weave and collide. Their stories may be shocking, their morals may be ambiguous, but they all want salvation. When dawn breaks, their lives will go on, however there will be another night to contend with soon enough. Be prepared for a close-up glimpse into a heartbreaking world of choices and consequences in the Welsh capital. Can anyone really break free from their past?
- February 2024
Jesus College Drama Society presents an LGBTQ+ History Month themed Open Mic Night, in colloboration with CUADC and Jesus LGBTQ+ Society. We will be collecting donations for the Terrence Higgins Trust, as part of the events alongside CUADC's production of The Normal Heart this week.
- January–February 2024
"Don't you remember how it was? Can't you see how important it is for us to love openly, without hiding and without guilt?"
Meet Ned Weeks, an impassioned activist in 1980s New York, battling indifference and discrimination surrounding a mysterious new disease that threatens to consume everything he knows. Amid heartbreak and societal apathy, as they lose those closest to them, Ned and his contemporaries grapple with the profound importance of love, community, pride, and hope in the face of a devastating epidemic.
The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer, first performed in 1985, is a searing and emotionally charged drama that is breathed life from the experiences of activist-giant Kramer himself. This vivid exploration confronts the early days of the AIDS crisis, spanning the years 1981 to 1984—the heartbeat of an era.
- November 2023
Our tale follows Dick, an optimistic (if sometimes naive), young lad who lives with his mum in Cambridge. Vigorously inspired one day after reading the autobiography of political journalist (Julie Fitzwarren), Dick decides to go to London to try and carve out success for himself - he hears the streets are paved with gold! On arrival in London, Dick is gleeful to glimpse what looks like a Yellowy gold road! But it turns out to be a double yellow line. Undeterred, Dick enters the big city and starts seeking for work. As luck would have it ends up employed at his inspiration’s house, where he is under the authority of the snobby, jealous chef Nigel Oliver. Nigel is determined to get rid of Dick and plots with his dog crony how to do so. Panto-hilarity ensues!
- November 2023
- November 2023
All money corrupts, and serious money corrupts absolutely.
When a top City banker has to solve a murder, legal and moral boundaries alike slowly dissolve with each step – especially for those who can pay the right price for it. As whimsical as it is biting, Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money presents an ever-whirling carousel of eclectic characters that propels its audience through the vice-riddled landscape of 1980s London financial market, and brings them face to face with unscrupulous big-shots and duplicitous opportunists in a provocative satire that is daringly playful and playfully daring as it penetrates through the fierce and ruthless world of unrestrained capitalism.
- November 2023
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