- February 2003
A blind man who sees only his garden, his power enduring even when his healtand seniority are lost. A son’s development profoundly affected by his fatherhis expectations, limitations and intractability. The figure of the patriarcdominates A Voyage Round My Father as it explores the emotional tensions of a complex family relationship, set against the backdrop of the traumatic first half of the twentieth century. Emotion is intense as each character attempts to deal with their inability to show love: so much remains unsaid. The acutely observed humour, intensely human characters and flawless dialogue make this play both amusing and profoundly moving. Original, often funny, but always deeply thought provoking; this challenging and compelling play is an insight into a world of shades of grey we can all relate to, but have probably never known how to express.
- January 2003
The ADC continues with its One Night Stands this term; tasters of different styles of theatre and themed selections of extracts. Ireland has been the source and inspiration of some of the best drama the world has ever seen. This evening, we take a journey over the sea to glimpse a rich literary culture at its dramatic best.
- December 2002
In an age in which Gods are anything but divine, and goat-men and centaurs roam the earth, Greece gets saucy, as music, dance and puns as ancient as mythology itself pour out of every urn. Philosophers, muses, furies and oracles take centre stage, as unlikely heroes Bacchus and Venus find themselves in a hair-raising, hilarious and myth-defying adventure to preserve the classical world from a fate worse than Oedipus. Funny, moving and downright silly, this year’s ADC/Footlight’s Pantomime ia completely original, wry take on ancient Greece, which promises to be hugfun for all ages. Beware of Greeks singing songs.
- November 2002
You’ve seen Victoria Wood’s stand-up shows, or maybe her TV sit-coms, but have you ever seen the famous comedienne’hilarious, but rarely performed stage play, Good Fun? Good Fun is just that, providing an enormously amusing evening of comedy theatrto suit all tastes. The fast-moving script, brilliant characterization anside-splitting story line will provide this year’s intake of comic talent thopportunity to show how good they really are.
- November 2002
The year is 1940 and the place London. However, this is not a London at war, but a London swarming with Nazi troops and controlled from Germany by Hitler. In this fascinating, rarely staged play Coward examines the chilling idea of what England might have become had the tide turned against the Allies in the Battle of Britain. This is a script which will both challenge and inspire the Freshers to produce what will undoubtedly be a thought-provoking and incredible evening of theatre.
- November 2002
BLOOD. DESIRE. REVENGE. Tragedy fuels tragedy when Tereus rapes his wife's sister, Philomele. Erotic, elegant, violent and magical: Timberlake Wertenbaker stunningly adapts this powerful Greek myth to create a compelling and thought-provoking drama. Amidst the intimacy of the Octagon, let sixteen actors guide you amongst acrobatics, masked plays and frenzied Bacchic rites.
- November 2002
Where is the line drawn between war and murder? This is the question facing Radajan Burivic, a Serbian soldier trapped in a recurring nightmare from which he cannot wake up. Plagued by figures from his past, he refuses to take responsibility for his part in horrific acts of ethnic cleansing, and is forced to re-live the massacre at Srebrenica in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered. A commanding piece of new writing from Cambridge student Christopher Bull which forces its audience to try and understand those who commit such acts of barbarity.
- November 2002
Come and support the Freshers as they make their first footing on the ADC Stage. A variety of extracts chosen by those involved, and including sneak previews from this year's Freshers' Shows. For one night only!
- November 2002
An award-winning television series, Talking Heads looks wryly at the everyday quirks of human life. Now the Amateur Dramatic Club brings three of the best of these monologues to the Corpus Christi Playroom. Bed Among the LentilsSusan is the wife of the vicar. And an alcoholic. Plagued by her husband's female 'fan club' and the pettiness of the church flower arrangers, she finds solace in the arms of an Indian grocer. Her Big ChanceLesley is an actress. A serious one. So when she has the opportunity to star in a film she grabs it with both hands. Oblivious to the true nature of her starring role, her insistence on her 'professionalism' is touchingly comic. A Chip in the SugarGraham lives with his elderly mother. Utterly dependent on their relationship he is bitterly jealous when she begins a friendship with another man, and their orderly, well-structured life is threatened. NB: These performances replace David Hare's The Blue Room as previously advertised.
- November 2002
Simple: an afternoon break on the usual bench (well it's the weather for it) and a good book. A stranger who forces eye contact. Questions that make you need to loosen your collar. Stories that make you forget where you are and how to get home. A set of pornographic playing cards, some empty photo frames, a dog and a trip to the Zoo. As the park empties and New York goes home, Peter falls under Jerry's hypnotic power. His is a world where televisions murmur empty messages from above to people lost in the lodging houses of New York. Jerry no longer knows how to pray.
- November 2002
Mother Courage and her Children follows the armies of the Thirty Years War back and forth across Europe, selling provisions and liquour from a canteen wagon. The war devours her children one by one. And yet she carries on. Written by one of the most important theatrical innovators of modern timesit is widely acknowledged as amongst the greatest plays of the twentieth centuryThis epic tale, spanning twelve years and most of Europe, is at turns touchingfunny, tragic and bitterly ironic. Written in 1939 as a warning about the futilitand horror of war, the play, with its setting of a war of faiths, is stilrelevant today. This production will mix theatre and song using Paul Dessau’original score and will seek to bring out the power and subtlety of one othe strongest theatrical statements ever made.
- November 2002
This Halloween, something very spooky is happening in the ADC Bar. The Amateur Dramatic Club brings you the best of scary drama, hair-raising poetry and devilish prose in a one-night-only show to reduce even the bravest souls to quivering wrecks... Come if you dare...
- October–November 2002
From the pen of Brian Friel, Ireland's greatest living playwright, Translations is a powerful historical drama which captures the emotional and social conflicts arising in a small Irish town during the British colonial takeover. Comic confusion and tragic romance play a crucial role in this play about the power of communication: How does one express the emotions of love, jealousy, hatred and pain when stripped of understanding and common speech? Watch as tensions rise and a fascinating melee of relationships develop in this poignant and moving exposure of the decline of the Irish culture and language. Are there certain barriers love cannot cross? Be prepared for an evening of entertainment, education, challenge, and passion - one you won't forget in a hurry.
- October 2002
Speak No Evil brings you an hour of comedy from three of Cambridge's best known stand up comedians: Ruth Pickett, Lloyd Thomas and Tom Tilley. Gain a view of the world through the comic's eyes, at times shocking, at times tragic, always funny.
- October 2002
For the third year running, the ADC presents an improvised night of hilarity from its sharpest comedic minds. Last year a member of the crew was forced to break up an onstage fight - so who knows what's in store this time? Audience participation encouraged...
- August 2002
In this new and chilling production of Puig's exceptional play, two men - each scarred by secrets and self-hatred - search for their own kind of beauty in an otherwise hopeless world that has rejected them. Encarcerated in a Buenos Aires prison, Molina tries to escape the realities of his cell through the metaphor of a film he thinks he has seen. Valentin struggles with his own demons, clinging to an ideology that maybe he never believed in the first place. First performed by Mark Rylance and Simmon Callow, Kiss of the Spider Woman contains two of the most challenging male parts in modern theatre. Threatening and fascinating, and accompanied by an original score, the ADC's production asks again and again the haunting questions: what does it mean to be beautiful, and what is the price you have to pay to achieve it?
- August 2002
This new piece adapts tales from Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. These classic medieval tales will be set in the new context of a seminary in 1950s Catholic Italy. Our group of seminarians and nuns smoke, tell dirty jokes, and enthusiastically exchange and enact medieval tales among themselves. They become involved in the tales as if they have been recast in the weird and disturbing interior workings of each other's imaginations. Familiar tales are interspersed with some unknown gems: Well known tales likthat of The Wife of Bath, and the deadly tale of Chaucer’s Pardoner are mixed in with the riotous and strange inventions of Boccaccio. We will be performing tales like that of Ferondo, a jealous husband who is convinced by an abbot that he is in purgatory and beaten for eight months (while the abbot has it away with his irresistible wife). You will also see the tale of the cockerel, Chanticleer, as you have never seen it presented before! Don’miss an extraordinary performance of some compelling medieval tales!
- May 2002
Ha ha ha ha, Ho ho ho ho. Ben Elton is one of the leading comedy writers otoday. See him at his most hilarious - the ADC is showing side-splitting extractof his best dramatic work. Escape exam stress, dump the revision and join ufor "An Evening of Elton!"
- May 2002
In 1944 Sartre created Hell. Hell, not of red hot pokers and lakes of sulpur, rather three people whose desires and needs continually torture each other. Better a hundred gashes, better the whips, the vitriol, than this phantom sufferinthat grazes and carresses and never hurts enough." Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this play to illustrate his existentialist philosophy; people's desperation to define themselves through others. Everything is perfectly crafted to tie the three main characters into a relentless vicious circle. Written towards the end of Nazi occupation in France, this play iunderstood as a work of protest. but more than that, it symbolizes the sense of captivity and despair that was only just beginning to lift in Europe. This period production creates a web of tension so dense it's almost palpable. It will leave you dying for a resolution.
- May 2002
Two old artists - Beauchamp and Martello - sit together in their attic apartmenarguing over which of them murdered their friend Donner, who now lies in crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. Donner's irritating domestic habitand the bitter angst of their artistic rivalry seem viable reasons for murde- don't they? The tape loop of time is set running, as we are transported acrosthe 20th century to the artists' youth in World War One, and so to their lovof one woman - Sophie. The questions are about human relationships and representationcharted across a century where the human figure has been abstracted by arand dismembered by war. This is "alternative" Stoppard, in a play that nevelooses sight of the blackness of life or its inherent comedy. " Let's cheer ourselves up by inventing verbs for various kinds of fatality!"
- March 2002
Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl... Barry Manilow's sensational COPACABANA takes to the ADC stage for the first time this Easter, in the first ever staging produced outside of London. Set in 1940s New York at the world famous Copacabana nightclub, this multi-sensual musical extravaganza transports us back to an era when 'music and passion were always in fashion'. The story unfolds through the imagination of an aspiring present day songwriter. While creating the world's next big hit, he conjures up the heart-warming tale of hopeful showgirl Lola Lamar as she is launched into the path of stardom as a Copa girl, with the help of Tony Starr, a bartender with dreams of his own. However, the course of true love runs far from smooth, since the villainous Rico has other plans for her, whisking Lola away to be the star of his Tropicana club in Cuba. Sassy New York is replaced by sultry Havana, as love and romance become embroiled in jealousy and murder. The action comes alive amidst vibrant costumes, spectacular sets, and sensational choreography. With glitz and glamour aplenty, the show-stopping numbers and thrilling musical score make for an unforgettable evening of good old-fashioned feel-good entertainment.
- February 2002
- February 2002
We'll drown in a sea of mourning... In 1936, Federico García Lorca completed one of the finest works of 20th centurdrama, and was shot by the Fascists in a grave he was made to dig with hiown hands. Not far from the site of this violent death in the hills outsidGranada, the real Dona Bernarda continued to exercise tyrannical rule oveher unmarried daughters. A stern woman, her daughters going by like shadowdressed always in black, who was to give rise to one of the most challenginand captivating characters in Spanish drama. The House of Bernarda Alba is Lorca's captivating Spanish tragedy of repression, desire and sexual longing. Stunningly lyrical, touching and at times shocking, we invite you to witness this disinfected womb, this crucible of repression; a cold and silent hell in the middle of the African sun.
- February 2002
In the basement room of a deserted house, two men wait impatiently for instructions on a job they must do. But their predicement takes a surprising turn as bizarre messages are sent from the supposedly abandoned floor above. One of Pinter's earliest plays, The Dumb Waiter is both a dark farce and a suspense thriller. Combining humour with tension, Pinter forces the audience into the role of detective in a drama where vital questions are left unanswered.
- February 2002
Alone. Alienated. Homeless. No family here, no friends, no jobs, nothing. Seeking asylum. Taking our money, our jobs, our housing. Filling the newspapers with their stories. Let them in? Throw them out? Halina has come to Britain to escape, to find a new life in our country. To many, she too is a just a statistic, a headline at best. But to the few who get to know her, Halina is anything but straightforward. Halina, an enigma, faces the ultimate dilemma: in an uncertain world, who can we trust? What is fact, what fiction?
- January–February 2002
Lust leads to adultery, adultery to murder, murder to revenge. Around this simple sequence Webster weaves his web of passion and pain, ambition and adversity, verse and violence. After years of neglect the first masterpiece of the man known to millions as the author of The Duchess of Malfi and as that little boy from Shakespeare in Love returns in a pacy modern production. As knives flash and disguises slip, no-one remains innocent in Webster's claustrophobic world of dazzling poetry, devastating violence and dark humour
- November–December 2001
In 1973, Elvis brought us Aloha From Hawaii. If, however, we swap the ‘9’ and the ‘7’ aroundwe find France in the throes of revolution. Only one man can make sense othe chaos, and as Presley is notable by his absence, the job falls to the elusivScarlet Pimpernel. While his next appearance is eagerly awaited by tremblinaristocrats, bored peasants, and makers of commemorative teacups, across thChannel in England a more emotional storm is brewing. Eyelashes flutter, bosoms heave and corsets seem fit to burst as love piercethe heart of one of England’s most impetuous bachelors. Can he be stupid enougto adopt the guise of his masked hero, and to provoke a series of enormousllavish and rousing showtunes detailing his plight? Why, yes he can. From the bestselling pens of Weeks and Macaskill (‘Hilarious!’ - Q1O3 FM, ‘Dazzling wit’ - Oxford Student, ‘Can get away with pretty much anything’ - The Cambridge Studentcomes a pantomime stuffed with some of Cambridge’s finest actors, singers ancomedians. Inspired silliness! Scathing wit! Bodice-shredding songs! Vive lrevolution!
- November 2001
Following the success of last year's One Night Stands, the Amateur Dramatic Club return with three more evenings of late-night theatre. Energetic. Experimental. Hilarious. Hell-raising. Funny. Flexible. Innovative. Interactive. And lasting about an hour. One night stands have never been this satisfying... An evening of improvisation and a cavalcade of (gory) excerpts from tragedies are two of the delights on offer, with the final instalment of term left tantalisingly open for anyone with a new idea, a theatrical challenge or a desire to be different.
- November 2001
Sounds like a typical evening in the ADC bar? Thespian bitchiness and backstabbing abound this week in the theatre, as the Amateur Dramatic Club initiate their freshers into the Cambridge theatre scene with style with this production of Berkoff's satire on the theatrical chattering set. In this short show originally written for TV, the audience eavesdrops on actors, producers, stars and wannabes dining out in London after the premier of the latest revival of The Three Sisters. Outside their incestuous theatrical bubble, Poll Tax riots course down the Strand, burning cars and attacking pedestrians as they go. The dark underbelly of the theatrical scene is exposed in Berkoff's hilarious satire - don't miss your chance to see it on the ADC stage!
- November 2001
A thrilling mix of ancient and modern hits the ADC stage with this year's freshers' mainshow. Cambridge's freshest new talent will stage Anouilh's compelling adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone, one of the world's oldest and most powerful dramas. Antigone's brother, Polixene, has dided in civil war. Disobeying her father's orders, she escapes the city at night to give him a proper burial. Her rebellious actions set in motion a chain of events which, as the Chorus comments, can only end in tragedy. Sophocles' original drama explores the themes of duty and honour, while Anouilh's adaptation adds an extra twist in illuminating the machinations of Greek tragedy. This moving and complex show should offer the freshers an exciting challenge, providing their audience with a thought-provoking and intelligent piece of theatre.
- November 2001
Under the menacing leadership of Stefan Golaszewski comes a group of disturbecomedians with a manifesto for change and a painfully funny show of threateninoriginality. The seedy underworld of the subconscious is to these writers whaimpressions of Mavis from Coronation Street were to Les Dennis. They are presentinCambridge with a new program for what is funny and new ways in which comedcan be performed. There will be no hilarious accents. There will be no fakbeards. This is the Real Comedy we have always secretly wanted but been toRuss Abbot-laden to face. What comes now is the ultimate variety show, a whirlinmix of comedy, music, magic, dance, and song. The change starts with this showand the first change to be made is to admit that jokes aren’t funny. See this show and you’lnever laugh at Ronnie Corbett again, except to mock his size.
- November 2001
Following the success of last year's One Night Stands, the Amateur Dramatic Club return with three more evenings of late-night theatre. Energetic. Experimental. Hilarious. Hell-raising. Funny. Flexible. Innovative. Interactive. And lasting about an hour. One night stands have never been this satisfying... An evening of improvisation and a cavalcade of (gory) excerpts from tragedies are two of the delights on offer, with the final instalment of term left tantalisingly open for anyone with a new idea, a theatrical challenge or a desire to be different.
- November 2001
Post-revolutionary France, 1808. In the baths of a lunatic asylum sits thMarquis de Sade, imprisoned for gross acts of indecency and sexual violenceHe has written a play about Jean Paul Marat, a revolutionary activist, whicis to be performed by the inmates. The story of an assassination unfolds withilarious black comedy entwined with tragedy in a collision of theatre, musicfilm and art. The Club’s ‘Elsewhere’ show is going to transform The Octagointo an Orwellian insane asylum. All hell is about to break loose... You are invited to watch.
- October–November 2001
Surrounded by his resentful assistants and embittered wife, and fearing that a new generation of architects will supplant him soon, Halvard Solness has become trapped in denial of all that he had once hoped for. Yet, when life-affirming Hilde Wangel arrives for a mysterious visit, his dreams of 'castles in the air' look set to be restored. First, however, he must confront his ultimate fears. The Amateur Dramatic Club use a vibrant, modern translation and original score to introduce nineteenth-century Norway and the story of Solness, the Master Builder, whose troubled life forms a tragic centrepiece to this beautiful play of tragic hope.
- October 2001
A woman was systematically raped and tortured for political reasons by a man whose face she never saw; years later her husband brings home a new friend for a drink, and his voice sounds horrifyingly familiar... This modern masterpiece is at once a claustrophobic suspense thriller and dizzying meditation on the nature of evil, defiance and forgiveness. In a world where so many countries are trying desperately to reconcile the dark and recent past with hope for the future, Death and the Maiden has never been more relevant. Written by Dorfman in exile from Chile during the Pinochet years, the plaputs torturer and victim face to face, and asks: "What next?"
- October 2001
Following the success of last year's One Night Stands, the Amateur Dramatic Club return with three more evenings of late-night theatre. Energetic. Experimental. Hilarious. Hell-raising. Funny. Flexible. Innovative. Interactive. And lasting about an hour. One night stands have never been this satisfying... An evening of improvisation and a cavalcade of (gory) excerpts from tragedies are two of the delights on offer, with the final instalment of term left tantalisingly open for anyone with a new idea, a theatrical challenge or a desire to be different.
