- 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
- May 2017
"They've forgotten when they were young.
And the way they yearned to be free
All they say is the young generation
Is not what they used to be."
Dean Street. Soho. 1958.
The Atlantic club is the heart of seedy, claustrophobic, dirty, drug infested, pill-popping clubbing. Fevers are running high as a gang of misfits sweat it out over the kidnapping of Silver Johnny, a rock star on the road to stardom. Then, when their manager is brutally murdered, the club is placed under siege.
Behind the doors of Ezra’s Atlantic, the visceral dialogue and destructive wit of the characters creates an atmosphere of anarchy and despair.
Butterworth’s blackly comic masterpiece explores dynamics of power, gender and personality. This is a play about damaged people who live life recklessly and without purpose, yet when their world comes crashing down they must come to terms with their loneliness, insecurity and the emotions they’ve been repressing for years.
“You won’t find much better ensemble acting than this, nor a play that so effectively punches the pretentions of a hermetic gangland culture.”
Our production of MOJO will be created entirely by an ENSEMBLE of actors and production crew, working alongside associate directors. We will discover the play together, as a collective, through a fun and intense process of collaborative ensemble work. All actors will be required to attend all rehearsals and production crew will also be brought on board throughout the process.
- March 2017
"Now let us assume that you are young, healthy, clear-eyed and eager, anxious to rise quickly and easily to the top of the business world. You can!"
A sharp satirical musical from the writers of the hit "Guys and Dolls", telling the story of window-cleaner J. Pierrepont Finch. Finch discovers the titular book and begins his rise through the World Wide Wickets Company until he becomes an executive of the company. He is sly, manipulative and loveable all at once. A number of other familiar office-types crop up throughout the show, from the big boss' desperate nephew, to a wide range of brainy and seductive secretaries.
A fabulous, all-singing, all-dancing parody of 60s business, fun for all ages.
- March 2017
“You stepped over the line.”
Shy, awkward, gentle Adam meets experienced, analytical Evelyn. Together they embark on an intense relationship which sees Adam go to extraordinary lengths to improve his appearance and character. Under Evelyn’s subtle and insistent coaching, we witness the gradual reconstruction of Adam’s fundamental moral character. At every step, we wonder how far Adam will go to prove his love for Evelyn, how far he is willing to stray from himself and his friends to mould himself into an ideal shape. Meanwhile, his best friends’ engagement crumbles. ‘The Shape of Things’ forces us to ask ourselves; how much of yourself would you change for love? How far would you go for your art? And is there a line between the two that cannot be crossed? Love. Art. Manipulation. ‘The Shape of Things’ brings all three together and asks where the boundaries between them lie.
- February–March 2017
The fens, east of Cambridge, have been underwater, drained, and reclaimed. They say its earth is so fertile that if you scoop up a handful you’ll grow three fingers before you throw it down again. Real people make their lives here, but the wild is always close at hand. The stories passed around are of daughters, fathers, lovers, foxes, twins, women, fishers, men.
Fen is a new devised piece based on stories by Daisy Johnson, created in the eery landscapes and dingy rehearsal rooms of Cambridge. It incorporates nature and technology into an immersive, uncanny exploration of the indelible marks a landscape can leave on its people.
- February 2017
https://vimeo.com/202564794
'I haven’t seen you in years, I don’t even know who you are any more but, fuck, yes I’m here for you, Ray, and I put that in writing we go through a whole procedure and you don’t… appear to give a shit.'
Ray has been discharged from mental hospital. The play charts his attempt to rejoin the wider world, under the care of his sister, who, busy running a restaurant and short on sympathy, can’t stop her brother from drifting into old habits, especially not when his best friend is a drunken old man prone to apocalyptic rages. Relationships grow, patience shortens and long-silenced voices start talking again as Ray and his new life hurtle towards breaking point.
“The most thrilling playwriting debut in years ... The writing is razor-sharp, sensitive, quietly eloquent, full of the touchingly drab poetry of lost lives.” - Sunday Times
- January–February 2017
"During the eight years of our mourning, not even the wind from the street shall enter this house!"
Andalusia, 1936.
In the wake of her husband's death, tyrannical matriarch Bernarda imposes eight years of mourning upon her five adult daughters: for eight years, they are not to leave the family home.
But Bernarda's blinkered puritanism cannot account for the desires of her daughters, and soon unrest begins to swell in the house as each seeks to assert a sense of self and their own place in the world.
Interpreted by an entirely female cast, this is a tale of generations at odds with one another, of the assertion of identity above conformity and of the drive to be human.
Often grouped together with The Blood Wedding and Yerma as a “rural trilogy”, The House of Bernarda Alba is Garcia Lorca’s final and greatest work. He was shot by the fascist authorities of Granada two months after it was completed.
- November 2016
Teams of writers, directors and actors must write, rehearse and put on plays on a theme in the space of just 24 hours. This is theatrical collaboration on a scale not seen anywhere else, pushing the whole team to the limit and creating unforgettable performances.
- November 2016
Welcome to the sleepy alpine village of Alpenberg; there’s beer, snow, semi-constructed gold castles, and the Christmas tree market is in full swing.
But when a careless offhand comment by the local landlord gets his daughter into trouble, it sparks a chain of events that resurrects Alpenberg’s darkest secret.
Meet our heroine Frieda, our lumberjacking Dame, and mad King Bruno for a snow-capped, gold-plated, schnitzel-covered tale of revenge, greed and love.
Cambridge’s finest offering of comedians, actors, technicians and musical talents present this year’s CUADC/Footlights Pantomime 2016: Rumpelstiltskin.
Come down to the ADC this Christmas and join us for a bit of rumpy pumpy.
- November 2016
Seven friends in their twilight years share a vast bed. Through an exhilarating sequence of abstracted monologues, expressive movement and spectacle, they dream, remember and reflect together on a long past. Acclaimed at the Royal National Theatre, Jim Cartwright’s Bed is a surreal exploration of life and dreams, of old age and death, an “odd, harrowing and hilarious piece, entirely without sentimentality, sturdy but moving”.
- November 2016
Everyone creates their own coping strategies or rules for living. But what happens when an extended family gathers in the kitchen for a traditional Christmas and they each follow those rules, rigidly?
In Sam Holcroft's theatrically playful dark comedy a family does just that. And when the instructions are there for all to see, audience included, there's really no place to hide. As long-held mechanisms for survival are laid bare, even Mum, who's been preparing this lunch since last January, becomes embroiled. Long-held rivalries and resentments will out.
Accusations fly, relationships deconstruct, the rules take over.
- November 2016
"A job is a wage and a wage is a cage in a town like mine."
Carl doesn't fit in at home. He doesn’t fit in anywhere. When he signs up for the army, he sees it as a chance to escape the grim reality of life in his hometown. But the army takes him to Afghanistan. And when he comes home, it’s not as a war hero but as a changed man. Winner of a 2011 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Britannia Waves the Rules is an arresting look at conflict and its effect on soldiers returning home to a world they no longer know how to cope with, and a society that doesn’t know how to cope with them.
- November 2016
“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.
- October 2016
“Show Political Restraint”
We invite you to come and traverse the turbulent history of early twentieth-century China in the first ever English performance of China's most famous play.
Teahouse is the revolutionary tale of the Chinese revolution: the fall of a dynasty, the establishment of the republic, and bloody civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists.
Follow history as told from within the iconic Beijing 'Yu Tai' teahouse between 1898 and 1948 as it struggles to survive in turbulent times. In its lifetime China transforms: it is a dying Qing empire overrun by foreign aggressors and rampant with human trafficking; a republic devastated by anarchy; a state saturated with oppression and corruption.
Is the hope of a new tomorrow real, or is it only an illusion crushed again and again under the wheels of history? Teahouse showcases Lao She's brilliant social and cultural commentary through a three dimensional depiction of the common and the grotesque, an international classic that remains eerily relevant today.
- August 2016
Fresh out of a critically-acclaimed run in Cambridge, a highly talented troupe of student dancers and performers bring you a contemporary circus interpretation of the family classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
Meet a break-dancing caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat dangling from a trapeze, and the Mad Hatter's tea party transforming into an even crazier juggling routine.
After witnessing such a variety of impressive performances, you will believe that six impossible things can happen before breakfast.
“A visual feast” - Cambridge Theatre Review (☆☆☆☆☆)
“Rapturous applause... Never has it been so well deserved” - The Tab (☆☆☆☆☆)
"Spellbinding" - Varsity (☆☆☆☆)
