- June 2019
'I’m walking down the street and there’s a door in the fence open and inside there are three women I’ve seen before.'
Three old friends and a neighbour. A summer of afternoons in the back yard. Tea and catastrophe.
From award-winning playwright Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone combines neighbourly chit-chat with visions of apocalyptic horror. Providing a uniquely female version of the Armageddon, four seemingly normal women sit down for a chat over tea over several summer afternoons; but what emerges about each of their pasts, as well as what lies in store for them, could never be expected.
- May 2019
“The plague bacillus never actually dies. It never disappears - not entirely”. From Camus’ novel, in an unnamed city, it has reared its head and sent forth its rats. The screaming becomes normal, the gates are locked, families and lovers have been cut off; now all there is to do is identify, diagnose, condemn and file. Faced with inevitable doom, humanity chooses to fight or resign, asking what we all want to - ‘can there be hope without meaning?’.
We bear witness to the retrospective inquiry into these events. Our protagonist, Dr Rieux, is torn between the personal and the official, bureaucracy ultimately hindering the inquiry and his healing. Camus’ original may have been a response to Nazi invasion, but now this electrifying adaptation makes it applicable to our personal and societal descent into chaos.
“What it is that you learn when you live through a time of plague… there is more to admire about people than to despise or despair of”.
- March 2019
The international, award-winning musical Legally Blonde follows the story of Elle Woods, a sorority girl whose life is turned upside down when her boyfriend, Warner, dumps her to 'get serious' and go to Harvard Law. Refusing to let her dream life slip away, Elle becomes determined to show him how serious she can be. She charms her way into Harvard but when she arrives she struggles to gain the respect of her peers, professors, and most importantly, Warner. With the help of a few good friends, she quickly realises her potential and sets out to prove herself in this new world.
This laugh-out-loud musical will take you from the lavish golf-courses of Malibu to the hallowed halls of Harvard Law as we follow Elle on her journey to discover you don't need to conform to other people's idea of 'serious' to win a murder case.
- March 2019
Bombs, bombs, bombs! Mary has been recruited for a top-secret national project in Malaysia by the ambitious General Zulkifli. The mission: building Southeast Asia's first atomic bomb.
There is a catch: there is no legal way for them to obtain uranium. Join Mary as she collides with one wacky character after another, from a shady uranium smuggler to an army general with a Napoleon complex. This political satire takes on racial issues, national hubris, the tenuous relationship between the East and the West, and the post-colonial hangover.
- January–February 2019
London, 1969. A conscientious but mischievous phone-operator uses her specialist skills to avert the end of the network.
The last days of the manual telephone exchange. While the new automated switchboards are being installed across the nation, an operator resents connecting phone calls that are ending the careers of her colleagues. Never shy to a prank, Susan commits herself to take it further, using her skills of eavesdropping, rumour-spreading, and call-misdirection to save the present from the future. When the upgrades were only scheduled in Birmingham alone she was able divert and disrupt them; yet within days the threat starts to close in on London itself.
Unable to match the efficiency of the system, Susan must contend for the human side of the technological sector. Though she is up against an industry that prefers the superfast dreams of the visionaries, who promise instant connectivity and the removal of human error. Susan refuses to leave, in part to complete her employment, and in part to wait for the impossible return of a precious fellow operator.
- January 2019
‘How do I define history? It’s just one f*cking thing after another.’
Sheffield. 1982. Eight bright but rowdy upper sixth boys are aspiring for Oxbridge, and Hector is in charge of getting them there, but the Headmaster has insisted on providing some new blood to help polish them.
A story of sexuality, lust, and potential, Alan Bennett’s acclaimed and beloved ‘The History Boys’ looks at a world where education is becoming less about what you are taught, but where it can take you.
Opening at the Royal National Theatre in 2004, it has since become a worldwide hit, winning the 2004 Olivier and 2005 Tony Awards for Best Play.
- January 2019
Join us for a relaxed evening of student-written, student-performed poetry, including a special performance from a feature poet.
- November 2018
‘Run, run as fast as you can. You can't catch me. I'm the Gingerbread Man.’
Gingie has been running his whole life. But when the evil venture-capitalist Mrs Badbury and the jaded Milky Bar Kid combine forces to convert Quality Street from a halcyon glade of flavour equality to a mass-producing, soul-destroying factory, Gingie must finally stop and bite back.
Will Gingie learn the value of friendship and tolerance to form an assorted mix of intrepid baked goodies? Will they be able to stop the baddie’s plan to turn the moon into a crème egg for profit? Will Flake finally decide to show up? Does anybody actually like Bounty?
Join us in a kooky cookie, topsy-turvy, curly-wurly story across the cosmos: it’s going to be finger-lickin’ good and ginger kicking food. Featuring the crème de la crème of Cambridge talent and choc-a-bloc with gooey goodness, ‘The Gingerbread Man’ is a treat for all the family.
- November 2018
The war is over. Berlin is crumbling. Don Juan feels like the last man standing, and after years of abstinence, is once again ready to engage in more of the debauchery and sin that made his name. But amidst the political and economic upheaval, fighting mental and physical battle scars, Don Juan finds himself increasingly at odds with the man he used to be. Hero or lothario, is there redemption for this broken man?
Ödön van Horváth’s visceral tale of isolation in the aftermath of the First World War is presented in a new adaptation by Duncan Macmillan.
- November 2018
Sisters Alice and Jenny are polar opposites. Alice works in Geneva, as part of the team at CERN searching for the Higgs Boson, the mysterious ‘God Particle’. Jenny is a skittish homebody living in Luton where she smokes, drinks, and puts more trust in her horoscope than her doctor. When tragedy throws them together again, the collision threatens them with chaos.
Lucy Kirkwood’s latest, electrifying play weaves together a family drama and questions about the fundamental nature of the universe. It asks us if there is a difference between what we know, and what we think we know.
- November 2018
On the South Devon coast, the Haussman family home stands dilapidated and derelict. Its chief occupant is Judy, an aging, anarchic hippy who – after a minor cancer operation – holds court, welcoming her children home. Libby, accompanied by her daughter, Summer, is waspish and resentful. Nick is flighty and nervous, a former drug addict with little to call his own. Over a few sweltering months, the Haussmans hash out their past differences, remember family dramas and infatuations, and day-drink the summer away.
Dealing with the legacy of the 1960s and the Baby Boomer generation, Stephen Bereford’s debut play captures the spirit of a generation, and the consequences in their wake.
- November 2018
- November 2018
Poetry nights at the ADC bar are back! These relaxed performance evenings showcase the best of Cambridge writing talent. Come and join us for diverse compilations of assonance, rhymes, and mic drops. With tried and tested favourites, and new material, there’s something for everyone.
- October 2018
‘Sin will pluck on sin’
It is 1980 and the notorious York family has finally made peace with their bitter rivals, the Lancasters. Everyone is looking forward to a period of calm, united under the new head of the families, Edward. Edward’s younger brother, Richard, however, has other ideas.
Cast-away and jealous, the unassuming Richard plans to take the role of Don for himself.
Political drama meets gangster-thriller, this re-adaptation sees Shakespeare’s least redeeming character seamlessly slot into the modern world by acquiring the position most suited to them: that of a scheming mobster.
- October 2018
"There's always been something wrong. Always, just as long as I can remember. But I never knew what it was until all this happened."
In 1930s rural England two female teachers are falsely accused of homosexuality by one of their students. Once the scandal reaches the local community, Martha and Karen's lives are destroyed as they become increasingly ostracised by society.
Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour was banned when it was published due to its controversial depiction of female homosexuality. Now in the 21st century, it serves as a powerful reminder of the horrors of intolerance.
- August 2018
A new translation of this ‘scandal play’ from 1903 unveils intimate conversations between people before and after they have sex. A prostitute meets a soldier on the street and they have sex on a bench. In the next scene, the soldier seduces a housemaid, and so on until in the final scene, a noble Count meets with the prostitute and everything goes full circle.
While it may not be as scandalous now as it was 100 years ago, the characters and relationships are just as accurate and still startlingly contemporary. Confrontational, physical and funny, this original production dissects the relentless mechanics of desire, gender roles, and power imbalances that still exist today.
- August 2018
"Drifting Towers is a noughties’ adventure video game set in a bleak futuristic cityscape. It was discontinued shortly after release for being too difficult. Reddit users called it ‘dense but ambitious’.
Best friends Sam and Tobi have been playing the game for 8 years, and they’re nearly at the last level; but while Sam wants to keep playing to the end, real life doesn’t wait for them to finish.
Tobi is moving away, and things will never be the same. The real world slowly bleeds into the absurd adventure of the game - in both worlds, all Sam wants is not to be left behind."
A new comic devised play about friendship, moving on and mashing the square button til your problems go away. From the people who brought you 'Spiders', 'Conviction', 'The Arm in the Cat Flap', 'Stormface', 'Footlights Presents: Pen Pals', 'Baby Steps', 'Welcome to Little Heswing' and more.
- May 2018
In a campus of a small New England University, Martha and her husband George arrive home from a party at Martha’s father house. Despite it being 2 am the pair are expecting guests for a spot of after-party drinks; the new biology professor and his wife Honey.
As the alcohol flows, the stage is set for a night of drunken debauchery and revelations. George and Martha compete to find new ways to humiliate and fight with one another in front of Nick and Honey. Battle lines are drawn as these unsuspecting guests are dragged into a private hell of a marriage.
Let the games begin.
- May 2018
'I used to have an imagination too, you know.
All it does is get you into trouble.'
Nineteen-year-old science genius Luke finally has some peace to work on the extraordinary box in her living room, holed up in a dingy flat on a near-abandoned Middlesbrough housing estate.
After her unbalanced brother Rob introduces her to a wealthy out-of-towner they're thrown into a dangerous world that threatens to tear the siblings apart and unleash the power inside her invention.
Brilliant Adventures is a fast paced tale of family, addiction and breaking the laws of physics.
- March 2018
The record-breaking winner of 12 Tony Awards, ‘The Producers’ is the smash-hit musical comedy based on Mel Brooks’ Academy-Award winning movie.
A down-on-his-luck Broadway producer and his diffident accountant come up with an illicit, lucrative scheme to produce the biggest flop in history.
From toe-tapping storm-troopers to chorus lines of zimmer frames, this is an unmissable gem of a musical which will have you crying with laughter.
10/10 review from TCS
https://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/theatre/0038626-review-the-producers.html
- February 2018
“There is a story for you. It is waiting where the snow falls.”
Faryn spends most of her days alone, recording the stories of her ancestors in books that will never be read. She is content, until the day comes when she decides to venture further away from home than ever before. It is then that she encounters a village - and a girl - whose way of living shows her that life cannot be lived like the stories she has inherited.
Wander is a story about storytelling that captures the human experience in a world just a touch beyond reality. This new and devised piece will take you on a bittersweet journey of nostalgia, tenderness and joy.
- February 2018
“Lots of talk about people disappearing. Pomona’s a place that finds itself in those conversations. I don’t know why. But if you’re looking for someone lost… Might be a place to look.”
Gale collects the blood types of her employees. Charlie guards the gates to the underground warehouse in Pomona. They don’t know why, but they don’t ask any questions - because deep down, they know they don’t want the answers. As Ollie’s search for her missing sister leads her deeper into the dark belly of the city centre, she discovers horrors which reveal to her why it’s easier not to get ‘involved’. Unsettlingly funny and deeply challenging, Pomona tears the sheet off our modern world to confront with the horrors hidden beneath. Blurring the line between fantasy and reality, it leaves us questioning where the nightmare ends and real life begins.
Described as a ‘fierce dystopian drama with terrific comic edge’, Alistair McDowall’s Pomona jumps between and blends together nightmarish reality and horror role-play games, as we gradually piece together exactly what is happening underground.
- February 2018
Porterhouse College prides itself on having remained exactly the same for over 500 years. Swan is served in hall, the rowers are head of the river, and no one has achieved a first since 1956.
Disaster strikes when a liberal politician is appointed as the new master. Sir Godber plots to introduce a self-service canteen in hall, a condom machine in the toilet, and most horrendously of all… female undergraduates!
Porterhouse’s incurably traditional porter Skullion and the aging dinosaurs on the college council simply will not stand for it. This war for Porterhouse’s soul can only end one way: with three deaths, an incriminating television documentary and 2,000 inflated condoms raining down on Old Court.
Welcome to Porterhouse College, Cambridge.
- November 2017
On the bustling streets of Paris, a revolution is brewing. And so, apparently, is the beer.
Today the world is going to be turned upside down. Today is the day of the Feast of Fools. It is the biggest, brashest, most politically radical party in town. And we have a hunch that you’re going to enjoy it.
The rich will become poor and the poor will become rich. The left will become right and the right will become left. Good will become bad. Day will become night. There’ll be lonely bell ringers with silly names, there’ll be moving gargoyles and pantomime dames. There’ll be dancing goats and drunken clowns, frightened villains and forgotten crowns. There’ll be lights, music, dance, song. Revolution, power, protest...
Ding dong!
- November 2017
‘This has everything to do with sex. This is about men and women. It’s because he’s a man and you’re a woman.’
It’s Bella’s twenty-ninth birthday. A group of her friends gather to celebrate, but tension quickly rises as the group discusses work, relationships, and sex. Overshadowing the occasion is the fact that Bella’s father is in hospital, about to die, something she has yet to tell her friends. The action is set over the course of a single evening, with Bella’s father present in the form of flashbacks and memories.
Nina Raine’s debut play is a hilarious and explosive examination of what it is to be young, free, and scared to death.
- November 2017
When the 13th Earl of Gurney dies, it falls to his son Jack to run the estate. It’s a shame, then, that Jack is a clinically insane religious fanatic who calls himself the God of Love. And with drunk butlers, scheming relatives, and German psychoanalysts all blundering around the place, it’s no wonder nothing’s getting done! But will their attempts to cure Jack go to plan? Is it possible that the God of Love has a dark side?
From auto-erotic asphyxiation to a showdown with Electric Jesus, Peter Barnes’ black comedy is a wildly funny romp through the world of the the ruling class.
- November 2017
A vivacious, feisty comedy about three sisters processing the death of their mother.
On the eve of their mother’s funeral, Teresa, Mary and Catherine come together to remember and misremember their childhood. Huge personalities, wild spirits and opposing ways of life clash and entwine as the women co-exist back in their mother’s home. As partners arrive on the scene, the secrets of the women’s new lives surface, while flashbacks to their memories of their mother’s life reveals the hidden and clouded past.
Full of tension, emotion and fun, Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, is an explosion of brilliant drama.
- November 2017
Every payday, garbage collector Troy Maxson holds court in the backyard of the Pittsburgh home he shares with his wife, Rose, and their son, Cory. By Troy’s side are his two best friends, Bono and a bottle of gin. Both are very good listeners, and there’s nothing Troy enjoys more than a captive audience. When his tales spin too wildly into fiction, Rose steps outside to playfully call him on his nonsense. As the evening progresses, Troy is sometimes joined by his eldest son, Lyons, who borrows money, or his disabled war veteran brother, Gabe, who has just moved from Troy’s home in a defiant display of his independence.
Life is a series of routines culminating in death.
Fences has a scope and impact far bigger than that of a simple family drama.The most accessible of August Wilson’s cycle of 10 plays, Fences manages to blend laugh-out-loud humor and tragedy in a deeply affecting combination that will add up to a thrilling evening at the Corpus Playroom
- October 2017
Watergate has passed, Richard Nixon has fallen. Having gone from being one of America's most popular presidents to being utterly disgraced, virtually overnight, he spends his retirement out of the limelight, playing golf and wheeled out at expensive dinners like an exhibit, utterly dissatisfied.
David Frost has also fallen. The British talk-show host, having once broken America, has lost most of the notoriety he once had, and feels like his career has stagnated on the B-list.
In 1977, these two great personalities came together, to clash in four interviews where everything was at stake. For Nixon, it was the chance to regain his reputation, for Frost, fame would come from getting the former President to apologise for his actions. Only one could come out victorious.
In a thrilling and nail-biting play from the award-winning writer Peter Morgan ("The Queen", Netflix's "The Crown"), later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Frank Langella and Michael Sheen in the title roles, we discover the nature of truth, the art of journalism, and how far two men will go in order to win back their lost reputations.
- October 2017
New to Cambridge?
Not new to Cambridge, but new to theatre?
Not new to Cambridge OR theatre?
Audition Workshops will take place this Saturday 7th October at 17:00 and Sunday 8th October at 16:00 in the ADC Larkum Studio (just ask at the bar or the front desk if you are unsure of where to go). The workshops are open to anyone and everyone, regardless of your level of experience!
Come along to have a chat to Ellie and Adam, the CUADC Actors' Reps, about how auditions in Cambridge tend to work. We'll be on hand to answer any questions, and (hopefully) allay and fears you might have. Tea and biscuits will also be making a cameo appearance...
You don't have to come on the dot at 5 or 4, we'll be in the Larkum Studio for an hour on each day, so pop in at any point with a question or just to say hi!
Please send any accessibility concerns or pressing questions to Adam and Ellie at actors@cuadc.org.
- August 2017
For 13-year-old Maklena, the Soviet Union is the best fairy tale yet. She imagines life in ‘the land of the Soviets’ and dreams of joining the revolution.
Her landlord Zbrozhek has a different ambition: to buy the local factory and see his name in golden letters.
When their dreams are put on the line, reality and fantasy become confused and communist and capitalist ideals are taken to the extreme.
This will be the world premiere of the English translation of Kulish’s masterpiece - written just before his execution by the Soviet authorities.
- August 2017
Blood dries darker than you think
It's the moment of darkness into deeper darkness
Are those my only options?
Congealed red on the glass
A mouse in your cereal box
A noise up ahead
A scratching between the wall
As they shot them right through the wing
Are you going to kiss me back?
Are you going to?
Nature is revolting! London struggles against an animal infestation - or does it? In the midst of the chaos, six characters endure a restrictive, claustrophobic existence: as curfews are enforced, roads closed and parks burned to the ground, their humanity is reduced to one alarmingly similar to their animal companions. Smith’s play presents a twisted version of natural selection that interrogates how far society will go to protect itself. As animal instincts kick in and civility is discarded, characters must choose between fight or flight. Should they bare their teeth and bite back, or roll over compliantly?
- August 2017
“I used to think I could just replant myself – that exile was a new garden in which to grow. But now my roots are rotting. I’ll stop being a tree and turn into sand.”
Six women meet in exile. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know when, or who, or why. Stuck in this place of placelessness, enclosed and without borders, they search in the sand for memories of home as their identity slips through their fingers. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Medea feels entitled to the last drop. Antoinette is trapped in the attic. Agave is haunted by the image of her son’s severed head. Samasti just got her period. Abhita thinks this is a joke. And Elaheh wants to write down the desert. As tensions run high and the water runs out, the women are forced to unearth their stories.
- August 2017
“I can make… impossible things happen”
Jude Beringer thinks she’s going mad. Then she meets Leon, a young card magician who can make people disappear. What follows is a wildly entertaining journey through the minds of two young people surviving against the odds in the big bad city.
A Sudden Burst of Blinding Light is at once a delirious game-show, a witty and inventive exploration of mental illness, and a powerfully compassionate play about family, friendship and illusion.
- June 2017
“Take it back. If she couldn’t hear it, surely she must be able to see it - the words running like ticker tape through the whites of my eyes.”
George is a brilliant linguist who spends his days cataloguing and studying dying languages. Meanwhile, his marriage is crumbling and his wife Mary is leaving him. Yet despite being fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Cantonese, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Esperanto, he doesn’t have the words to ask her to stay.
Alta and Resten claim to have fallen out of love, despite being the last speakers of Elloway, they barely converse and only in English - 'the language of anger'. Emma is madly in love with George, she has been for a while now. For them, language is both excessive and inadequate.
As each character navigates the fault lines between communication and connection, we discover that love like language, must be learned and practiced, or else it too will falter and expire. But unlike language, it carries a universal and unspoken quotient.
Julia Cho’s 'The Language Archive' is a poignant meditation on love, loss and all that gets lost in translation.
- May 2017
‘I have holes in my shoes
I have holes now even in my feet
there are holes everywhere
even in this story.’
Layal is the only artist who can paint nudes. The Girl enjoys listening to N’Sync and can distinguish between different weapons by hearing them fired. Umm Ghada mourns for her family, who were killed in the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing by the United States.
Inspired by a trip to Baghdad in 2003, this play is a beautiful exploration of the lives of nine Iraqi women that span the decades between the first and second Gulf Wars and occupation. Raffo brings hundreds of interviews to life in this moving, raw and intimate examination of the effects of war on women living both in Iraq and elsewhere.
The Tab: ★★★★1/2
https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2017/05/18/review-nine-parts-desire-94458
Varsity: ★★★★★
https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/12997
