- October 2004
From the bowels of the deep recesses of the dark deep – comes a play? A play. If you wanted an eclectic example of the betrothal of the marriage of absurdism, naturalism.
From the award-multi-team-winning-team that brought you the multi-award-winning comedy ‘Daddy’s Dead’ this comes.
“Doctor Doctor” “Who’s there?” “A really good play” “Come in” “What’s my Diagnosis?” Ear infection.
- October 2004
In the degenerate opulence of eighteenth century France, the magnetic and
manipulative Vicomte de Valmont and his former lover La Marquise de
Merteuil are locked in a convoluted and calculating game of sexual conquest
and emotional sadism.
Seeking diversion from the ennui that even their customary sexual intrigues
and emotional perversions cannot alleviate, the two conspire to corrupt and
destroy the fifteen-year-old Cecile, who is barely out of her convent.
Meanwhile, Valmont also seeks prey more worthy of his talent and
reputation; Madame de Tourvel, happily married and famous for her strict
morals and religious fervour, would be his greatest coup.
Thus, the two masterful chess-players manipulate their pawns for their own
sadistic pleasure. But as the stakes rise ever higher, there emerges from
beneath a veneer of frivolity, an intense emotional power struggle and the
ultimate tragedy.
- October 2004
“In the daytime you think the Neverland is only make-believe…but this is the Neverland come true!”
In its centenary year, we enchant imaginations young and old with this
awesome and turbulent flight into Neverland! Laughing, crying and tapping
your feet, you'll wish the games could last forever...
Using the essence of games and playing, this production reworks this classic story into something that today’s child can relate to. Set entirely in the Darling nursery, the imaginations of Wendy, John and Michael conjure before our eyes the fantasy world of Peter Pan, his lost boys, pirates, Indians and the legendary Captain Hook. What we see as a coat hanger is in an instant transformed into the most dangerous weapon known to man and an ordinary bunk bed can become a pirate ship.
The Cambridge run
The Cambridge run is hosted by Homerton Amateur Theatrical Society. For the Cambridge run, performances are free but donations for Great Ormond Street Hospital are welcomed.
Booking in advance for the Cambridge run is essential: for a ticket email blf22.
Reviews:
Three weeks ****
Children’s games and imagination are at the centre of this stunning production of Barrie’s classic novel. Using toys and bedroom furniture to create both the nursery and the various scenes across Neverland every location is enacted as if part of Wendy’s fantasy, with characters brilliantly created, avoiding the clichés. Tinkerbell is simply a little flashing light and some bells, Captain Hook has a really scary yet beautiful hook and Peter is strewn in both dirt and glitter. I am especially impressed by the girl they have signing the show for some dates, making its loveliness accessible to all. Everything you could ever want from ‘Peter Pan'.
- October 2004
FIVE VISIONS OF THE FAITHFUL by Torben Betts returns from its highly
successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for four nights only at
the Cambridge Union.
"The best acted student show I have seen in a very long time" - The Observer
"Something we all hope for at the Edinburgh Fringe" - British Theatre Guide
"Constantly riveting: a wealth of talent" - Edinburgh Evening News
"Fierce and constantly uncompromising" - The Scotsman
"Creepy, terrifying, confusing and disturbing" - Three Weeks
"Good old-fashioned outrage!" - The Times
"I was fascinated, moved and left not a little baffled!" - Peter Lathan
**** - Radio Fourth, One4Review, BTG, Fest Online, ThreeWeeks, Evening News.
Waiting for life. Waiting for sex. Waiting for death, love, punishment.
Everybody is waiting for something. But who is waiting for salvation? This
is a bold, hugely ambitious piece of drama, delivered in brute,
matter-of-fact language. Cambridge´s finest present a spectacle of physical
theatre and cartoon comedy.
Five shocking visions. Seven deadly sins. Ten broken commandments. These
are five very different tragicomic meditations from acclaimed and
controversal playwright Torben Betts hailed as the next Howard Barker.
Brave new cartoon comedy.
- August 2004
'five different contexts; five different types of theatre. this is bold new writing from a playwright hailed as Howard Barker's successor. Critics have raved that he is ' a major new playwriting discovery'; to see his shows it is 'worth canceling anything'. This brutal cartoon comedy is to be performed from the 4th until the 30th of August at the Edinburgh Festival in the acclaimed c-venues, home to the largest theatre and new writing programme at the fringe. A riveting marriage between the philosophical and the theatrical, these messy tragicomic meditations give us unsparing visions of everyday hell using characters from heaven.'
- August 2004
“In the daytime you think the Neverland is only make-believe…but this is the Neverland come true!”
In its centenary year, we enchant imaginations young and old with this
awesome and turbulent flight into Neverland! Laughing, crying and tapping
your feet, you'll wish the games could last forever...
Using the essence of games and playing, this production reworks this classic story into something that today’s child can relate to. Set entirely in the Darling nursery, the imaginations of Wendy, John and Michael conjure before our eyes the fantasy world of Peter Pan, his lost boys, pirates, Indians and the legendary Captain Hook. What we see as a coat hanger is in an instant transformed into the most dangerous weapon known to man and an ordinary bunk bed can become a pirate ship.
The Cambridge run
The Cambridge run is hosted by Homerton Amateur Theatrical Society. For the Cambridge run, performances are free but donations for Great Ormond Street Hospital are welcomed.
Booking in advance for the Cambridge run is essential: for a ticket email blf22.
Reviews:
Three weeks ****
Children’s games and imagination are at the centre of this stunning production of Barrie’s classic novel. Using toys and bedroom furniture to create both the nursery and the various scenes across Neverland every location is enacted as if part of Wendy’s fantasy, with characters brilliantly created, avoiding the clichés. Tinkerbell is simply a little flashing light and some bells, Captain Hook has a really scary yet beautiful hook and Peter is strewn in both dirt and glitter. I am especially impressed by the girl they have signing the show for some dates, making its loveliness accessible to all. Everything you could ever want from ‘Peter Pan'.
- June 2004
A great ball. Champagne. Music and dance. Lovers by moonlight and eccentric old dears.
An exquisite ball, held to announce the engagement of Frederic to a millionaire’s daughter becomes a melting pot of intrigues as Hugo, having enlisted help of a beautiful dancer, plots to drive the lovers apart. Hugo and Frederic are in fact identical twins, so alike that “it is neither permissible not proper” but could not have been more different in their nature. The plot of mistaken identities becomes a source of many comical situations in the play. Eventually, all of the guests become entangled in this deliciously vivacious, fast-moving and dazzling plot which simply captivates the spirit of May Week. Exquisite entertainment and yet much more than that: the play poses the questions on the nature of identity as well as pondering on the strange ways of love…
Languish on the grass, enjoy a glass of wine, strawberries and cream and watch this wonderfully rose-tinted comedy.
- May 2004
Nick and Mick are rivals competing for the rights to produce an explosive new reality game show. Beneath the shroud of constructive and friendly instruction, the Director of the company manipulates and deceives them from day one, creating a tension between self-belief and teamwork. Implicated in this web of deceit is the Director’s shy but obedient secretary, Meg, who finds herself in the hands of all she encounters, used as a tool in their own self-advancement and corrupt dealings. When the Director’s wife, Debbie, asks Meg to seduce her boss to test his love and faithfulness, the barrier between business and pleasure is crossed and inner anxieties and desires revealed.
The debut performance of new writing within Cambridge promises to be a comic and diverse portrayal of stereotypical scenarios, with a tragic twist to boot. Expect everything except your expectations!
- April–May 2004
Henrik Ibsen's masterpiece is being brought to the Octagon Theatre. This production moves events to the 'roaring 20s' as newly-weds Hedda and George Tesman return home, Hedda begins to understand fully the stifling confinement to which she has condemned herself, and seeks to restore 'beauty' and meaning to her life. The opportunity presents itself in the return to town of an old flame and academic rival of George's, but as events unfold it becomes clear that the mundane and the ridiculous have a habit of suppressing and ruining the truly beautiful. A blackly humourous and subtly powerful piece, 'Hedda Gabler' is one of the most poignant tragedies ever written.
- March 2004
Annie Oakley is a poor country girl. Her sharp-shooting skills see her join Buffalo Bill’s traveling Wild West Show. There she soon falls hopelessly in love with Frank Butler, the big star. But Annie soon eclipses Frank, and they look destined to fall apart. She soon realises she'll have to make some difficult choices if she wants to win her man...
With numbers like Anything You Can Do (I can do better) and There’s no Business like Show Business, this is classic feel-good musical theatre at its best. A thrilling, romantic, vibrant production, with everything from tribal dance to gunslingin’ stunts which will amaze... not to be missed!
More information is available at the show website: anniegetyourgun.co.uk
- March 2004
Featuring some of the more unusual numbers from the Broadway and West End stages, the Amateur Dramatic Club is delighted to be bringing a touch of the musical wonderland to the ADC Theatre stage. Featuring numbers from 'The Last Five Years', 'Sweeny Todd', 'Rent', 'Me and My Girl', as well as the Lent Term Musical, 'Annie Get Your Gun', the evening promises to be an hour packed with some of the show stopping hits from the past few years.
- March 2004
Ambition, murder and treachery come to the ADC. “Now is the winter of our discontent” to “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”; from end to end a classic. Watch as English drama’s original and most magnetic villain takes over the stage and the world around him in his path to the crown by blood and by deceit. An imaginatively staged and powerful new interpretation of Shakespeare’s astonishing play.
- February 2004
Predatory, violent, immoral, angry, frustrated and comic lads Mike and Les want some easy cash, and a quick leg-over. Their target, Sylv, is an unhappy, unconscious collaborator in her own sexual exploitation; their Dad is a filthy slob; then there is poor put-upon Mum. This savage, witty and repellent play presents 1950s London: Berkoff described it simply as ‘frontal assault’.
- February 2004
The Challenge: to write, rehearse and perform a play in 24 hours. The Venue: the ADC Bar.
The last time 24-hour plays were undertaken, the audience were left wondering why weeks of rehearsal are ever necessary
- February 2004
Millions of pounds, nine husbands, two eunuchs, a butler, two thugs and one ex-boyfriend – you could be forgiven for thinking that Claire Zachanassian has it all. But she wants one more thing: revenge. Just how far will the people of the small town of Gullen go for the reward that she has to offer? By the author of The Physicists, this is a tragi-comedy revolving around money, power, revenge and greed.
- February 2004
A love story set in colonial East Africa during the Second World War. A new country, Tanganyika, is being created with Britons, Germans, Asians and African tribes living side by side. Michael is an English farm manager, born and brought up in East Africa and Poppy a confident, idealistic, Indian girl, educated in England whose father is one of the wealthiest businessmen in the territory. Separated by class, race and outlook, their relationship grows and strains against a background of racial tensions and the war. A powerful look at the need to dissolve divisions of tribes, factions and cultural boundaries, and re-form, in the process of building a new country.
- February 2004
He is named Gwarra. The Lost One. And the Owl cries for him. And he will not listen.
A mother's search for a son. A man's search for identity, born to one world, brought up in another - and alien to both. A boy's question - why am I different? A poignant story of intertwined lives, crushed in the aftermath of the clash of Australian Aboriginal and European cultures.
Based on a true story, this intense piece of new writing comes to the ADC for a one-night rehearsed reading, following a highly successful performance at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
- February 2004
‘Cripple Billy’ lives with his two aunts on the island of Inishmaan. The pattern of life on Inishmaan is disrupted when local gossip Jonnypateenmike brings word that a Hollywood movie is to be filmed on the neighbouring island. Martin McDonagh’s meteoric rise to fame on both sides of the Atlantic is fully justified in this superbly funny, dark, and moving tale. McDonagh is unrelenting, unafraid, irreverent, politically incorrect and, most disturbingly, horribly astute.
- January 2004
Chritie in Love is based on the story of John Reginald Christie, one of the most notorious and disturbing serial killers of the past century. Seen as one of Brenton’s masterpieces, it is a gritty play with an intimate cast that retells a timeless story of sexuality and criminality set against the role of the media. Christie’s tale is a corrupted love story, one of intense honesty and utter atrocity.
- January 2004
Prometheus Unbound in association with the ADC return to Cambridge this Edinburgh Fringe success about the quartet of free-thinking radicals: Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Claire Clairemont. "An amazing play...witty, acerbic and accurate" – Three Weeks "Strong ... moving ... genuinely affecting... speckled with humour... a production of which the ADC should be proud" – Varsity. Proceeds will be donated to the ADC Theatre Appeal.
- December 2003
Ten years have passed and the inhabitants of Wonderland have called Alice back through the looking glass one last time to save their world from destruction. Join Alice, the Mad Hatter, the much maligned Jabberwock and the little known Furious Bandersnatch for a lively evening of song, dance, comedy and extremely cross dressing.
- November 2003
Have you ever tried to protest and become frustrated when nobody listens to your voice? Have you ever wondered what would happen if you just gave up trying to be heard and stopped speaking altogether? Would anyone notice?
When Gemma, a young lady living in London, decides to give up speaking and to lose herself in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, her partner and friends are completely thrown. In this unique play Anthony Minghella parodies the superfluous conversations and the triviality of cosmopolitan social life through the voices of Gemma’s friends.
- November 2003
Albert paints the bridge. Hampered by the cost-cutting policies of the Chairman and his team of adept bureaucrats, Albert is engaged in a constant battle to defend the beauty of his beloved bridge. But he doesn’t really mind the struggle: life up on the bridge gives him time to think. Until it all goes wrong, that is, and Albert’s bridge and his life begin to fall apart.
- November 2003
The young and ambitious Charles Lang has designed and built an engine that uses only distilled water as its fuel – and tries to obtain a patent for his groundbreaking invention. But in the dog-eat-dog world of 1930s America, the lawyers from whom he seeks advice quickly turn on him, desperately seeking to steal his designs.
- November 2003
Returning to Argos, Orestes finds his mother married to his father's murderer, and his sister Electra working as their skivvy. Meanwhile, the gods send flies to plague the city, revenge for the regicide the people have permitted. Set in a nineteenth century mental asylum, Sartre’s absurdist reworking of this Greek tragedy is an intelligent and disturbing study of madness.
- November 2003
Under Milk Wood is the extraordinary story of apparently ordinary people. As we are drawn into the world of the inhabitants of Llareggub Hill, we discover a dream-like landscape of characters who are by turns hilarious, quirky, dark and brooding.
This production is about the madness of everyday people, how dreams and reality fade into one another and the creation of a unique world by one imagination.
- October 2003
For the fourth year running, the ADC presents an improvised night of hilarity from its sharpest comedic minds. Audience participation encouraged...
- October–November 2003
When Teddy, a professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his old home in London, he finds his family still living in the house. In the conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of the family’s struggle for supremacy. Bringing prostitution, pimping and Pinter to the ADC stage, The Homecoming is an immensely successful work from one of the most accomplished playwrights of the twentieth century.
- October 2003
A man falls asleep. He wakes up in the sea. It looks like magic. But it’s not magic, it’s comedy! One hour of concentrated, non-biological humour, this show will take you to places you never knew existed without resorting to time travel.
- October 2003
Top Draw Productions in association with the ADC return The Edinburgh Fringe hit to Cambridge. A rapid, revolutionary romp through 30 years of action-packed Commie history, featuring smash hits such as The Gulag Rag and Mrs Stalin Regrets.
"As post-pub entertainment goes, this is about as good as it gets" - Edinburgh Evening News.
"Witty and entertaining" - The Observer
Promises to be a sell out run – book now!
- October 2003
Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for someone. Fairly convinced that his name is Godot, they’re not entirely sure what they want from him or whether they’re even in the right place. Their wait is interrupted by the enigmatic whip-wielding Pozzo, and Lucky, his dancing slave. All of them are searching for comfort in the increasing absurdity of their situation. A black comedy which oscillates between the dark and the hilarious.
- August 2003
'Mad, bad and dangerous to know' George, Lord Byron meets the radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his two 'wives'. From their meeting flows free love and the greatest Romantic poetry. Meanwhile Frankenstein's monster waits to be born.
- August 2003
Visually striking, powerful, challenging. Euripides’s archetypal play for modern times: the war has happened before and will again. As ever, the women are left to sweep up what remains…
- July–August 2003
An Evening with Joe - Stalin the Musical is a rapid, revolutionary romp through thirty years of action-packed commie history.
The year is 1924 and following Lenin's death, Stalin and Trotsky battle for power and the hand of the alluring, er... Mrs Stalin. As with all naive, lefty pipe-dreams, things soon go awry. Of course, genocide and suicice hardly help these matters...
Yet Stalin, for all his perversions and purges manages, in true musical theatre style, to save the day. Ha!
Profound and challenging for the mildly intoxicated, this show brings Edinburgh all that is best in the genre of genocidal musical comedy.
- June 2003
Three old bufoons, three wily wives and three young suitors run rings around each other in two hours of Restoration jiggery-pokery. What is the best sort of wife? A witty one, a devout one or an innocent one? For the husbands in 'The London Cuckolds' the answer is none of them - all of them betray their husands. Trees are climbed, balconies are jumped, hapless lovers are wedged in windows, thrust into cupboards and hidden under sheets. With everything from bawdy jokes to cross-dressing, this is a bouncy, saucy, old-style Restoration farce and the first May week garden-show the ADC has put on for over 5 years. Singing, silliness and seduction in the idyllic surrounds of the garden at Westcott House (click for map): The perfect way to start a Mayweek evening!
- May 2003
Lance meets Percy on a train hurtling accross Europe. Percy is on a journey of discovery having realised his expensive university education has taught him pretty much nothing. Lance doesn't want to discover anything, he wants to live in his memories. Together the two men try to make sense of why they are there, aided by impromtu visits from Elvis and Richard Nixon among others. An original and thought-provoking piece of writing from one of Cambridge's finest new writers, the rehearsed reading of No Problems promises to be well worth seeing.
