- March 2016
This year's Lent Term Musical needs no introduction. West Side Story has enthralled audiences worldwide since it opened on Broadway over 50 years ago. The timeless appeal of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is carried into 1950s New York City, as star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria begin their narrative against the background of the rivalry of their respective gangs, the Jets and the Sharks.
This collaboration between three of musical theatre’s most iconic figures, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, features some of the most well known musical numbers of all time, including ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘America’.
- March 2016
‘Do they always do that?’
‘Who?’
‘The birds.’
‘No. It’s unusual. It’s the marsh. The marsh calls them. They’ve been coming a thousand years.’
Wattmore and Griffin are ex-Cambridge college gardeners, living with secrets and darkness in the bleakness of the Fens. A £2000 pound poetry prize run by the university could be the blessing they’re after to clear Wattmore’s mysterious debt, if only they knew anything about poetry. As bird-watchers flock to the marshes near their cabin to catch a glimpse of the elusive night heron, the arrival of ex-convict Bolla to this strange family brings an unexpected female force and their lives unravel before us.
Haunting and poetic, Butterworth’s second play brims with absurd humour and symbolic imagery. This Week 7 Lent show lays humanity bare in a setting we know well, but have not seen like this before.
Prepare for shock, for laughs and underscoring it all, the urgent howls of the freezing Cambridgeshire wind.
- February 2016
“I hear those voices that will not be drowned.”
It is 1912 in Walberswick and a young boy has died at sea. Peter Grimes is to blame, or so his fishing village thinks. Sentenced to isolation, Peter rebels against his community and takes a new apprentice, the sixteen-year-old son of his fiancée. Rumour spreads quickly on the wind and gossip rules the waves. A storm is coming for Peter Grimes…
Based on the beloved poem by George Crabbe, then made famous by Benjamin Britten’s opera, this new telling of the Grimes myth uses the death of a child to explore the dark and primal side of humanity, focused through an individual whose vicious isolation has troubled generations of writers.
- January 2016
‘They never asked about the women.’
When a city falls, its people must bear the wreckage. A live news crew will film the destruction but not the aftermath. It does not capture a mother looking for her lost boys, a fallen woman trying to keep up appearances, a young girl’s duty to pay off a bargain she’d never been participant to. They are merely numbers, tallied up figures for the television reports. They are not human. They are mere dolls.
Darkly humorous and epically tragic, Trojan Barbie is an exhilarating play. Placing characters of antiquity within the very real world of a military occupied refugee camp, the play explores how, after over two millennia, we are still no closer to solving the consequences of war and the people it leaves behind. Hecuba, Polyxena, Cassandra, Andromache, Helen of Troy and Lotte of Reading all hurtle towards their fate in this electric modern spectacle about war, its reverberations, and its women. Whether it's ancient myth or a vivid reality...
‘They never asked about the women.’
- January 2016
‘The worlds’s going to be a different place in ten years, everything’s that’s stopping us, what we’re told to do, what we’re told is the way to live, it’ll all be different, you can feel it.’
Sandra and Kenneth know the world is changing. Through the dope haze they grasp at the promised new tomorrow. As idealistic teens are hurtled into mid-life parenthood, it feels as though something has gone terribly wrong. The change has escaped somewhere with the smoke and empty wine bottles. Divorce, old age and retirement creep up just as quick and the 21st century offers our pair the rewards of the baby boom generation. Their children look on, bitter and angry. Generation X rails at the laissez-faire attitude of their parents that has condemned them. Olivier award winning playwright Mike Bartlett draws us into the generational debate and leaves us to make our minds up.
- November 2015
Creativity. Determination. Caffeine. These are just a few of the elements that go into a 24 Hour Play festival. 24 Hour Plays is a fast-paced, mad, and extremely fun gallop through the theatrical process, for both the participants and the spectators! 5 teams have 24 hours to write, rehearse, and perform short plays, which will be voted on by the audience. The results are completely unpredictable, but predictably fantastic. To the winner goes the glory -- and a good night's rest!
- November 2015
In medieval times, life was very different to now. There were huge divides between rich people and poor people.
There were also snazzy musical numbers, talking trees and a live audience watching the every move of a medium-sized town in the East Midlands. Welcome to Nottingham!
Here, the Sheriff’s long-term economic plan is in full swing, and everything is rosy; the caviar flows like water and the water flows if you pay your taxes. Yet all this is about to change. When Maid Marian has a chance encounter with Robin Hood, she sets in motion a tree-topping tale of love, lies and Marxist liberation that promises to blow the glass ceiling, and your minds.
Will the Sheriff’s iron rule be broken? Will Marian find what she is looking for? Will Scarlet is also there. Join us for this year’s glitziest, jazziest, sparkliest, socialist-est show of all, starring the cream of Cambridge’s comedy and musical worlds in the all-singing, all-dancing, CUADC/Footlights Pantomime: Robin Hood!
- November 2015
Sculptor Brindsley Miller has pulled out all the stops to impress his flighty new fiancée’s hard-nosed father and a millionaire art collector, including embellishing his humble apartment with furniture ‘borrowed’ from an absentee neighbour. Then, the lights go out!
Brindsley blindly struggles to salvage the evening, but the unexpected return of the neighbour, not to mention a surprise visit from a jealous ex-girlfriend, mean that he might be better off keeping everyone in the dark...
Watch what really happens when the lights go out in this uproarious comedy from Peter Shaffer.
- November 2015
Based on Jamila Gavin’s novel and first staged at the National Theatre in 2005, Coram Boy is an emotionally overwhelming play set against the backdrop of adolescent love, abandoned babies, cruelty, murder, social prejudice, friendship and the music of 18th century England.
At the heart of this play is the story of two boys from very different backgrounds. Alexander, the son of Lord Ashbrook and a musical prodigy, runs away from a life of duty as heir to the family estate in pursuit of personal and creative freedom. Meshak Gardiner is the impoverished, mentally-damaged son of the sinister Otis – a man who promises a better life for abandoned children. During their troubled adolescence these very different life journeys become intrinsically bound, particularly through Aaron, the illegitimate son Alexander unwittingly leaves behind.
Though Aaron starts his life in the Coram Hospital for Foundlings, as he grows into a young man it becomes clear that he has inherited his father’s musical ability, a gift that could ultimately reunite his family.
- November 2015
"He pats her... his patting becomes beating and he continues beating her even though she's screaming..."
Nancy’s existence is on hold until she finds Rhona, her missing 10 year old daughter. Agnetha wonders if her work investigating the minds of criminals is starting to affect her own thoughts. Meanwhile Ralph, sitting on a bench, feels the hot sun on his face, and spies the next little girl he’d like to keep him company for a while. The mother, the academic, and the perpetrator are drawn together, culminating in a shocking confrontation.
Frozen dares to ask whether it’s possible to understand the minds of serial killers, and ultimately to forgive them.
- November 2015
'I heard y'all talkin' about killin' Momma. I think it's a good idea.'
Dallas, Texas. The Smiths are just like any other American family. 6 grand in debt to drug barons, they hire 'Killer' Joe Cooper, a detective-cum-contract-killer, to murder their estranged matriarch for her sizeable life insurance policy. When Joe demands a rather unusual retainer for his services, a simple plan spirals dangerously out of control.
Explosive, gory and darkly funny, this Southern Gothic pulp classic by Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Letts (Bug, August Osage County) has been causing controversy, on stage and screen, since it premiered in 1993.
- October 2015
Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.
Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.
Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale.
FRANKENSTEIN was first presented at the National Theatre, London on 5 February 2011, directed by Danny Boyle
- October 2015
"It is now one hour before dawn - when I must dismiss us both. When I return, I'll tell you about the war I fought with God through His preferred Creature - Mozart, named Amadeus. In the waging of which, of course, the Creature had to be destroyed."
It is 1823. Vienna. The famous composer Salieri is ill and dying. For him, it seems, his final hours on earth are not just for reminiscing, but confessing. Amadeus is the story of that confession - of how Salieri made a deal with God in the hope of gaining talent, and how the greater genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned everything upside down. Upon witnessing Mozart's extraordinary talents first-hand, Salieri starts down a course of action with dark and dangerous consequences for both men.
Peter Shaffer's play is a costume tragedy for the stage, taking the audience back into the world of the Viennese court of the 18th century and exploring the personal, and political motivations behind the facades. An ensemble of exotic and lively characters people his world, a world where music is intertwined with intrigue, sexual bargaining, and gossip. The play itself has been through multiple versions since its first run in 1979 (with Ian McKellen and Tim Curry in the leading roles), including one oscar winning film. Twice director of Amadeus Peter Hall has said that the current play has evolved massively from a melodrama into what it is today "while keeping its thrills and its intellectual edge, it has become a profoundly humanist play about forgiveness and atonement."
- August 2015
Come and explore the streets of Milton Keynes. Walk with the homeless, shout with the angry, cry with the confused and laugh with the posh people with s**t on their shoe. Their dramas converge to seek solace in the only place with the lights on (from 12am-3am). Inside lies a waitress who cares about everyone’s story except one woman’s… who feels left out, and has a gun. Welcome to the tragic madness that is the ‘Midnight Cafe’.
- August 2015
A new farce of dark comedy and pamplemousses set in the sexy, cloak and dagger world of Art History. It's 19--, and the fashion for using dashes to indicate a vague date is taking Paris by storm. Everyone becomes very, very confused when Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire are arrested for the recent theft of the Mona Lisa (this is almost a history fact). Can they prove their innocence? Can they persuade their next door neighbour that they are not having an affair with his wife? And, most importantly, can they find the right word to describe the Mona Lisa's smile? Find out in this one-door tragi-farce, the latest product from the invent-a-genre warehouse.
- August 2015
A darker side to William Shakespeare’s most popular comedy.
With the moon rising over Athens, four lovers escape a tyrannical judgement and seek solace in the woods, only to be caught in a macabre fairy plot. Desire and domination are bound together as Oberon bends a defiant Titania to his will. Meanwhile, mortal lives become playthings as a mischievous Puck play cupid. Mischief leads to malevolence and devotion dissolves into obsession in this infamous tale. Shakespeare's comedy is given a darker edge: reality is twisted beyond recognition and dream tips into nightmare.
- May 2015
2015.
There’s a new general at Army Headquarters.
Othello’s appointment sparks controversy, because of her gender as well as her ethnicity. Behind the combat training, military expeditions and national scrutiny, some personal conflicts are at play.
Iago’s jealousy begins to manifest itself.
The soldiers and their loved ones are dragged into a melee of suspicion, resentment and revenge.
This dynamic and boldly original take on Shakespeare’s powerhouse tragedy explores a new framework of mistrustful relationships, gender politics and discrimination.
“In following [her] I follow but myself… I am not what I am.”
- May 2015
‘Do you believe in ghosts?'
Miss Jessel is dead. A new governess arrives at the remote estate of Bly to find two children of absolute perfection.
But as she grows to love the orphans, strange occurrences start to haunt the house. As the secrets of the manor are revealed, the governess begins to doubt if she can protect the children or herself.
- April–May 2015
Did he fall? Or was he pushed? Only one man can cut through massive bureaucratic duplicity and reveal what happened to the suspected anarchist who died at the bottom of a fourth-floor police station window.
In a world of commonplace deception and organised corruption, he stands as a bastion of honour and justice. He also happens to be a notorious liar, quick-change con artist, and certified maniac.
Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo’s explosive political farce, inspired by a true story, in a version by Simon Nye ("Men Behaving Badly"), brought to life in a riotous new production.
Come and witness a masterpiece in comic absurdity, a feat of acid wit and farcical bravado, and see for yourself whether there is any method in the madness.
- March 2015
“How do you document real life, when real life’s getting more like fiction every day?”
Coming to the ADC Theatre this March, “Rent" is the smash-hit rock musical which follows the lives of people struggling to live as artists in New York City.
Unafraid to be honest in its portrayal of the hardships that face people, Rent does not shy away from subjects of controversy: alongside the struggling film maker, an angry performance artist and issues of sexuality and depression we are faced with those living with AIDS, addiction and sordid pasts that threaten their current happiness.
Yet, with its contagious energy and thirst for life, Rent promises to bring the audience to its feet with high tempo numbers such as "La Vie Boheme" and “Rent” as well as familiar favourites such as "Seasons of Love"
The biggest, coolest and most heart-wrenching show of the season, make sure you don’t miss out on Rent!
“Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?”
- February 2015
'Dreaming with Dalí' is an hour long surrealist sketch and monologue based comedy play which tells the story of Salvador Dalí's quixotic journey into his own subconscious mind to discover the greatest surrealist object there has likely ever been. It provides the opportunity to experience for the first time what it would be like to dream as though you were inside the weirdest mind of the past hundred years and promises to be very odd indeed.
- February 2015
“Oh how exciting! This’ll be something to tell the grandkids!”
Norman and Rita Sterling are an elderly couple enjoying their golden years in Italy, however after meeting a mysterious stranger on a train they are thrown into the hilarious world of crime and espionage.
Join the Sterlings as they bumble through the shady streets, bustling nightclubs and smoky restaurants of Italy with the mafia hot on their tail.
This hilarious comedy tips its fedora to the stylish art of film noir and is filled to the brim with femme fatales, deadly assassins and vicious gangsters.
With stunning visuals, tense action sequences, side-splitting slapstick and a guest appearance from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, this raucous spoof will have your lungs explode with laughter!
- February 2015
As the New York Times put it, 'Pravda is an epic comedy - part The Front Page, part Arturo Ui - in which a press baron resembling Rupert Murdoch...does battle with over 30 characters as he conquers Fleet Street journalism and, by implication, liberal England's soul'. As Punch put it Pravda is also 'Savagely bitchy and often wildly funny'.
Ridiculous and hilarious, but powered by a central figure of reptilian evilness, Pravda is a comedic drama based in the newspaper print rooms of the 1980s. As a business man starts to treat the world of journalism like he does his dodgy business deals, he encounters moral resistance from a few individuals who seek to take him down. As careers rise and fall and revenge plots are created, the characters are lead into the age old conflict between ethical underdogs and corrupt powerhouses.
"'we' don't publish corrections...a newspaper isn't just a scrap of paper, it's something that people feel they have to trust. And if they can't trust it, why should they read it? A thing is true or it isn't. So by definition, what is printed must be true - otherwise why print it? And if we apologise and correct, how can the readers know what is true and what is not?"
- January 2015
“If you knew God, Doctor, you would know about the Devil. I only know he was my little Alan, and then the Devil came.”
Alan Strang is a nice boy. His family love him. He has nice eyes. Then one night he blinds six horses with a metal spike.
For Martin Dysart, the psychiatrist charged with treating him, what starts as a routine case quickly descends into a dark history of parental oppression and religious fanaticism. From violent Biblical imagery to twisted sexuality and paganistic ritual, Dysart finds himself immersed in events which threaten to shatter his own faith in reason and sanity.
Branded as one of the most controversial plays of the twentieth century, Equus uses an act of inexplicable violence to explore the dark and primal side of humanity, culminating in a finale which has gone down as one of the greatest – and most disturbing – in modern theatre
- January 2015
It’s been weeks and the estate bombings still haven’t ceased. Meanwhile Gary’s school project on Osama Bin Laden is creating waves among the locals. An alleged pedo, a violent thug and his sister take matters into their own hands, to protect the safety and honour of their estate.
Four characters try to understand their feelings of self-hatred and the futility of life. Dennis Kelly (Utopia, Matilda the Musical) shows our capacity to detect a fault with ourselves or the world around us. Then he shows what happens when we blame that on someone else.
Osama The Hero is a brave masterpiece of contemporary theatre. It charts the course of a fragmented reality, where disparate elements coalesce violently for one central act, before exploding again into ambiguity. It is a play about the necessity and danger of making truth. And watching it, you are forced to construct your own.
- December 2014
Since its inception in Manhattan's Lower East Side over 15 years ago, the 24 Hour Plays have appeared all over the world, pushing theatrical talent to its limit and creating unforgettable performances.
What will happen when Cambridge is asked to create 5 new plays in just 24 hours in front of a panel of judges? The clock is ticking.
- November 2014
Emperor Wilf loves clothes. No, he REALLY loves clothes. But why? Maybe it’s because he wants to impress his newly-inherited kingdom. Or perhaps it’s to do with the town newspaper, the Looking Glass, run by the shady reindeer-human Rudolph Murder, who has been spreading snide rumours about the Emperor. Perhaps he just has a passion for fashion. Whatever the reason, the Yuletide Parade is fast approaching, and unless he finds the perfect outfit, something pretty bad is going to happen. Something really bad. We know what it is - we’re just being coy. So thank goodness he’s spotted an advert in the paper for a new, sparkly, confidence-boosting suit that’s bound to be the talk of the town… Come on down to the ADC this Christmas to catch a glimpse of Wilf’s... tribulations.
Featuring a brand-spanking new score, bare jokes, the cream of Cambridge acting talent, and written by 3 members of the Footlights, this year’s CUADC/Footlights Pantomime is seam-ingly flawless - don’t get your knickers in a twist, book your tickets now!
- November 2014
'Who's spoiling life, me, us them or God?'
The residents of Road are at the mercy of their country. A state-of-the-nation drama, presenting the underclass of the North. Fighting to escape the endless circle and inevitability of class and regional oppression, the people of Road are merely surviving.
Prepare to be both uplifted and weighed down. Let Scullery walk you down Road where you will come face to face not only with those who live there, but with your own prejudices, fears and ambitions for a better future.
- November 2014
From homemade fireworks to dubious ballet, everything that can go wrong does at the Sycamore household. But when their youngest daughter brings her fiancé and his buttoned-up parents over for dinner, that's when the real fireworks start to fly.
Join Cambridge's newest acting talent as they tell the story of the Sycamore household, at times heart-warming, at times eccentric, and at times just plain mad!
- November 2014
"Hell is other people."
Three damned souls are trapped for eternity in a small Second Empire drawing room where the lights are always on and no one can sleep.
Jean Paul-Satre’s existential classic weaves a blackly comic triangle of desire, spite and violence as the three inhabitants wrestle with each other and with themselves. Each have their own secrets to tell, each have their own lies to expose. The pressure-cooker spirals into a maelstrom of manipulation, mockery, and malice.
- November 2014
‘Go on! How’s it gonna be? “We gonna get a little place . . .”’
George and Lennie have a dream. It is a dream of freedom. After finding work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, that dream seems almost within reach for these two migrant farmhands. But, on a suffocating summer evening, that dream falls quickly and traumatically from their grasp.
John Steinbeck’s modern classic is brought to the stage in an adaptation that expresses the immense value of hope and trust. This visually striking production promises a timeless tale of love, loyalty and determination, seething above a brooding score. This is a tale of hope and human resolve at their most strained.
- October 2014
In amongst slates of cold metal, A. sits at their desk shuttling data files to and fro. But, in a moment of clumsiness, a cascade of drives fall and upset the delicate balance of the mess and unearths a single photograph. Who is that? Where's that come from? What does that go with? 'Clutter' is a new play that looks at information, memory, and identity. There might be yoga.
- October–November 2014
"It's only history if you steal something really large - like a country, then it's history". In 1950's west-central Johannesburg, artists, activists and illegal bars make up the freehold township of Sophiatown, the beating heart of culture in apartheid South Africa. Home to Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Lewis Nkosi and Mariam Makeba, when the Government decides to racially and geographically segregate the population, Sophiatown finds its very existence threatened. Enter the politically charged household of local shebeen owner Mamariti; home to Jewish tenant Ruth Golden, political journalist Jakes, local gangster Mingus, his truanting teenage-sister Lulu, socialite girlfriend Princess, shoe-loving henchman Charlie and local politician-cum-mystic Fafhee and you have an explosive cast of diverse characters battling for recognition amongst class warfare, racism and political rebellion. An evocative piece of political-musical theatre, Sophiatown is a history lesson that won't be easily forgotten.
- October 2014
"Our city drowns in a tidal wave of disease and death that shows no mercy..."
Thebes is cursed.
In his luxurious palace, King Oedipus fights against fate to determine the reason for this punishment by the gods. However, he uncovers dark, disturbing truths unlike anything he could have imagined. Years later, his daughter Antigone battles for justice against her autocratic Uncle Creon, becoming a revolutionary in a city that has descended into poverty and chaos.
The terrible fate of Oedipus, Antigone and their family unfolds in an evocative new production based on Sophocles' masterpiece. ‘Oedipus and Antigone’ is an unforgettable epic tragedy which follows a proud father and brave daughter battling the gods for survival. This ancient story echoes down the centuries and asks us to consider the role destiny plays in all our lives.
- August 2014
A century after the events it depicts, 'And The Horse You Rode In On' (* The Tab; Varsity; **** TCS) is an honest and poignant depiction of the lives of ten men in the trenches, fighting against the cold, the enemy and one another as they await the final call to charge. Original and powerful, 'And The Horse You Rode In On' is a new and stunning war-time drama marking the loves, lives and losses of the men on both sides of the most senseless conflict in human history.
- August 2014
Sue Townsend's play sees three agoraphobic women endure a jumble sale organised by their social workers in an attempt to drag them, kicking and screaming, into the open. High jinks ensue as Fliss, the lefty trainee and Gwenda, the 'ex' agoraphobic volunteer get the 'girls' to face the public.
The girls are obsessively hygienic Bell Bell, ex variety songstress Katrina and the vulgar Margaret whose 'been in' longer than either of the others. The origins of their fears are explained as the jumble sale takes its toll in Sue Townsend's 'amusing yet uncomfortable and occasionally shocking slice of Eighties’ life'.
'As a study of agoraphobia, Bazaar and Rummage...is written with great verve, style and wit' (Benedict Nightingale, New Statesman)
