- August 2012
Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents AS YOU LIKE IT by William Shakespeare
An ALL-MALE PRODUCTION of the timeless comedy, touring to the EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE 2012
“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…”
Performed with an all-male cast, as it would have originally been staged, this CUADC production of As You Like It will be a festival of ludicrous metatheatre. Join the inhabitants of a corrupt modern-day court as they are thrown into the idyllic wonderland of Arden…a rollercoaster theatrical experience, where everyone is in Elizabethan costume.
‘…fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world…’
Rosalind and Celia just want to find somewhere to charge their iPods (the former likes Beyonce, the latter…definitely Katie Melua), but they have to get into Globe-garb, and listen to the sonorous lilt of the Renaissance lute. As they wander deeper into the countryside, they fall further and further into the past and find themselves in a completely different theatre. Court wrestling becomes WWE, Rosalind and Celia have to shed their Louis Vuitton and get into corsets, and Orlando can’t get any signal on his Blackberry, so he’ll have to try his hand at tree-carving.
‘There's no clock in the forest…’
This is Shakespeare at its most inventive, most ridiculous and most playful. CUADC’s As You Like It is a modern rendering of the play, but will be (teasingly) faithful to the hilarious, heart-breaking and highly energetic performances of the original Elizabethan stage.
- June 2012
Following its run at the Corpus Playroom, Zombie Haiku was selected to be one of twenty shows performing at the International Student Drama Festival.
You are so lucky | That we cannot remember | How to use doorknobs.
An original adaptation of Ryan Mecum's book, Zombie Haiku follows one lone survivor's journey through ruined houses, decimated cities and abandoned airports as they contend with exploding petrol stations and reanimated work colleagues. Bringing the humour, emotion and darkness of the book to the stage, this production blends physical theatre, music and (of course) haiku for an entertaining exploration of what happens when the living clash with the undead.
The city is dead | Streets are filled with people | Who aren't quite people.
- May 2012
A master of language, cleverly accessible and humane, brilliantly calculated, David Ives is perhaps the funniest writer of short plays in America today. Struggling with love, problems of communication and defining their true self, his hilarious and tormented characters must deal both with the complexities of ordinary life and large metaphysical issues. Discover what happens when you can reset conversations with strangers, find out what is at the bottom of the black holes called ‘Philadelphias’ and realize how made up languages can solve social anxiety. The world of David Ives is enchanting, perplexing and very, very funny.
- May 2012
King Richard II’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, lies murdered. Unable to arbitrate between his cousin, Bolingbroke, and the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray – who each accuse the other of responsibility for the crime – King Richard resorts to exiling both. After Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt dies, Richard then seizes his exiled relation's rightful inheritance in order to finance a lascivious court and mismanaged foreign wars.
Discontent mounts, soon breaking into open rebellion
"Landlord of England art thou and not king"
Bolingbroke will claim his due. But what will be left for Richard if Bolingbroke takes the crown too?
"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me"
Drawing inspiration from the famous revival of the play at the Globe Theatre shortly before the Essex Rebellion in 1601, CUADC are proud to present Richard II – a mesmerising and enthralling beginning to Shakespeare’s History plays.
- March 2012
CUADC presents the 2012 Lent term two week musical: Footloose.
City boy Ren is forced to move from Chicago to the small southern town of Bomont, where he experiences a considerable culture shock.
A few years before, a tragic accident killed five teenagers causing local councilmen and the beloved Reverend Shaw Moore to place a ban on dancing and rock music. With his rebellious spirit and love for dance Ren challenges the status quo, attracting the attention of the minister’s troubled but beautiful daughter Ariel.
Will Ren succeed in bringing some life back to this repressed town?
With songs such as the title-track, “Holding Out for a Hero” and “Let’s Hear it for the Boy”, this show guarantees to have you dancing in the aisles and kicking off your Sunday shoes.
- February–March 2012
“Can’t act! Can’t act! Listen to the woman! You’re blonde, are you not? You have no education, have you? Can’t act! You underrate yourself, my dear!”
Pierrot and Columbine have been performing their scene for a long time. Pierrot is the sad clown, pining for the love of the clever serving wench Columbine. They sit at a long table decked out with a splendid banquet of plastic food and deliver their lines. Tonight, though, their little comic scene is interrupted. They are kicked off the stage, replaced by a pastoral scene starring two shepherds who can’t quite remember their lines. When the script moves towards an unpleasant climax, however, they can’t seem to stop acting it out.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, a bisexual, chain-smoking lyric poet, was the first female poet ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. First staged just after the end of the First World War, this unusual play, never before performed in Cambridge, conceals a searing appraisal of the human condition. It is “amusing, brutal, and brief.”
- February 2012
As the tide comes in, Antonius Block is playing chess with Death.
The Knight and his Squire Jons have returned from the Crusades to find their homeland ravished by plague, poverty and persecution. As they continue homewards, they meet the naive and talented performers, Jof and Mia, a deaf girl, and a young witch, shaved and tied up, ready for burning.
As the little company venture into the forest for the final leg of their journey, they stop to sleep, forgetting Death himself lingers in the shadows, breathing and waiting...
- February 2012
The Priory by Michael Wynne
Following her split from her boyfriend, Kate decides to invite a group of her closest friends to a renovated and supposedly haunted priory, for a New Year's Eve party. However, as the drinks and drugs start to flow, personal revelations begin to emerge leading to near tragedy and a fraught morning after...
- February 2012
Ava and Daniel lead separate lives in Liverpool. Both facing difficult decisions, for once they each find someone that listens.
Moments is the story of how a few chance encounters can impact on the rest of our lives. A play about the comfort of strangers, what we’re willing to share and what we keep to ourselves.
‘Do you really need to know someone to tell them your story?’
- February 2012
"It's like watching an accident on the highway - you can't look at it and you can't look away".
Michael is holding a party for Harold. Before the end of the night, the friendships and relationships of nine friends/lovers are tested to their extreme. With the shock and intensity of any Albee or Tennessee Williams play, Mart Crowley tells the story of a group of friends dealing (or not) with their demons. Boys in the Band portrays people in turmoil with startling naturalism and hilarity deftly juxtaposed with tragedy making both extremes the stronger.
- February 2012
A group of characters are on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. Whilst travelling they take it in turns to tell stories with the incentive of a free meal for the best tale. Some stories are somber, some comedic, and others just hilariously terrible! Added to this element are the tensions between the narrators in the group which, on occasion, result in exciting conflicts.
The Canterbury Tales are varied and fascinating, containing stories that range from morality and tragedy to farce. They will be presented in different forms from naturalistic to puppetry, physical theatre, musical theatre and mask work. We are looking for a cast that can multirole – playing everything from bawdy characters to traditional heroes/heroines and are focused and committed to producing an exciting and unusual show.
- January–February 2012
“It isn’t easy, starting a war, but nothing worthwhile is easy. And once you’re in, you’re hooked like a gambler, you can’t afford to walk away from the crapshoot once you’re deep into it”.
Mother Courage, formidable, vibrant, battleaxe of a woman, makes her living following armies up and down the country, peddling salvaged goods amidst a war torn wasteland. With her she brings her two sons and dumb daughter, dragging behind them their battered cart, both home and business in times of conveniently profit surging violence. Through them we meet a disarming world of brutality and charm, temperamental soldiers, braggart cooks and cowardly chaplains, as Courage continues in her unyielding venture, buying, selling, surviving; however great the cost. Matching the thrilling quality of its characters is a production of titanic proportions, bringing to you this Lent one of the most astonishing stage creations of the 20th century, a story that is utterly beautiful and utterly devastating.
“It’s too long since they had a war here . . . where’s their sense of morality to come from?
Don’t tell me peace has broken out again”
- November 2011
What would you do if you found a mysterious treasure map? Well that’s irrelevant. Treasure Island is the story of what young Jim Hawkins did. And what he did is very much the meat of this year’s ADC/Footlights Pantomime.
When a disgusting old sea captain leaves Jim a crusty old treasure map along with a whole heap of trouble, Jim sets off to unearth the legendary booty. Along with his bumbling friends and a love interest of sort, Jim sets sail.
But all is not well. The charming ship’s cook - a certain Long John Silver - is not all he seems, and there are whispers of mutiny.
Will Jim save the day? Only one way to find out! Join him as he swipes more swag and buckles more swash than any literary character to date (but not so much that it becomes repetitive).
The ADC/Footlights Pantomime is one of Cambridge’s theatrical highlights of the year, and brings together the finest comedians, actors and musicians in the University. Treasure ahoy!
- November 2011
From the twisted branches of the forest emerge some equally twisted storytellers. Taking charge of their cauldron of fairytales, they will conjure an unforgettable brew of gothic folklore and children’s nightmare. First there are the rogues: the black-hearted stepmother, the decaying beggar, and the charming old woman who will burn to death in her oven. There is a fantastical menagerie, teeming with flesh-mongering doves, the golden goose, and an amiable donkey, whose very bowel movements betoken good fortune. Then there are mysteries to be solved. Why are the locals sticking to each other and prancing through the hills? What use is a house fortified with gingerbread? And why does the golden slipper overflow with blood...?
Mingling the imagination of the Brothers Grimm with the dark humour of Carol Ann Duffy, this is one journey into the woods you certainly won’t forget
- November 2011
Defying the temptations of 17th-century France, the wealthy Orgon has devoted himself to his servant. That servant is a seemingly pious and moral man. But in reality, he is Tartuffe: trickster, swindler, master criminal and supreme disciple of Machiavelli. Slithering like a serpent, Tartuffe winds his way ever further into the aristocratic household. He leaves behind him an unparalleled trail of confusion and corruption: controlling master, seducing mistress, turning family member against family member – and even whipping the royal family into a frenzy.
In this lively new take on Moliere’s masterpiece, expect a multi-tiered wedding cake of comic abundance. It’s an enigma. It’s a romp. It’s Upstairs, Downstairs for the multiple King Louis generation. It’s the wildest house party known to man – and the invitation is entirely yours.
- November 2011
‘I am not a victim – oh no – That’s not a part I am willing to play – believe me.’
Amelia waits at home for her husband to return from war, with only her household help and detached son for company. When her patience and resilience are worn out, she resorts to increasingly desperate measures to bring her husband home, with no idea of how destructive her jealous and paranoid actions will prove to be.
Martin Crimp, ‘one of British theatre’s best-kept secrets’ (the Independent) reworks Sophocles’ Trachinae, blending Greek tragedy with modern dilemma. CUADC’s production promises to be an inventive and gripping telling of this story of desire, fear and self-deception.
- November 2011
When Dr Stockmann discovers the public baths are poisonous, he expects the people of his small Norwegian hometown to welcome him as a saviour. However, after the cost of the proposed improvements is made clear to the Mayor of the town, the pragmatic politician moves to manipulate both the press and public opinion against Dr Stockmann, his own brother.
‘You really are hell bent on our destruction, aren’t you?’
‘I love this town intensely. I’m wedded to it. Nobody wants to see their bride become syphilitic.’
Henrik Ibsen, widely hailed as ‘the Father of modern Drama’, tells a searing tale of honour, love and ambition. In a democracy, is 'the truth' ever more than what the the majority say it is? Is it worth pursuing at the expense of those one loves? Can the press be separated from power politics? Perhaps most pertinently, is Dr Stockmann’s discovery any more inconvenient than those that 21st century governments routinely suppress?
- October 2011
When Antigone defies orders from the state by burying her dead brother, she sets in motion a chain of events that rapidly spirals out of control. This ferociously charged play asks whether family bonds are stronger than civil ones, whether laws must always be enforced and if we truly have control over the decisions we take, testing the human limits of power and love. A new version by Richard Keith and Simon Haines; directed by Richard Keith.
Richard Keith trained and worked as a professional actor and director before coming to Cambridge, including performing at The Globe, the BAC, the Apollo Theatre, West End and directing at various London venues. He continues to teach at drama school and privately: whilst in London he was a member of the Young Vic Genesis Directors programme and The Royal Court Young Writers programme.
- October 2011
Two feuding brothers, a Catholic priest and a liquor-selling school-girl take centre stage in this black comedy about suicide, smashed china and a dead dog.
- October 2011
ADC LATESHOW Week 1, 12-15th October, 11pm
“Expect fantastic.
Expect escapes and japes and high quality high jinks.
Expect these things because expected, generally, happens.
I am missing a button on my waistcoat. I can’t perform like this.”
Bright lights, hay spirals down. Baltimore Bontecou seems to have left the premises, but the lights are on, the heating's still working and the acts look set to tick along swimmingly.
Explosive, stark, intricate in performance, “DANDELION HEART” is an expedition into the bizarre, its characters an experiment in embracing the peculiar and rolling with it. Comedic yet poignant, this play draws a world of fundamentally broken people, with a way of seeing that doesn't work in tandem with anyone else's, even each other's. What emerges, in the absence of any grounding point, is this:
Reality is relative.
Wed £5/£4, Thurs-Sat £6/£5
Praise for Moss' previous work
"Visceral . . . potent . . . sharp" THE STAGE
"Beautifully wrought . . . Slick, brutal, raw" VARSITY
- August 2011
This new play, an hour of comedy and scandal, unearths the genesis of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'.
An innocent writing contest in Lord Byron's Swiss villa, to quicken the heart and curdle the blood, spawns surprise arrivals, rivalries and romance, and the most infamous monster the world has known. Join Byron, the Shelleys, and guests as they clash, picnic, and witness the birth of ... 'Frankenstein'!
- August 2011
From the company who brought you 2009's ***** (Ed Fest Mag) "highly entertaining and visually stunning" (The Stage "Must See") Metamorphosis, which featured "breathtaking feats of acrobatic skill" (Three Weeks) and left "the audience feeling exhilerated" (Fest), comes a Macbeth like no other. Magic mirrors, outstanding physical theatre, and fantastic new music by the composers of Time Out's Critic's Choice Hamlet House of Horror combine to make a spectacular and nightmarish reinvention of this classic tale. You will be left questioning what is real and what is hallucination, what is evil and what is justified.
- May 2011
CUADC is excited to bring this intellectual, romantic, tragic and comic rollercoaster to the ADC stage. Skipping between genres and between centuries, Arcadia explores the irreversibility of time, the conflict between Classicism and Romanticism, the struggle between chaos and determinism, the difficulty of ascribing historical certainty, rules and numbers to love, mathematics, physics, architecture, nihilism, lust, madness.... No amount of words can begin to capture the brilliance of Stoppard’s masterpiece that, aside from anything else, has the most captivating and moving story, and a rich array of brilliant characters.
One room. Two time periods.
The magnificent drawing room of a Derbyshire country house. The precocious 13-year-old, Lady Thomasina, is studying with her tutor. The infamous Lord Byron is an unseen house-guest looming offstage. As the people around her have affairs, threaten duels, shoot rabbits, and mutate the surrounding landscape into a ‘picturesque’ Gothic fantasy land, she begins to grow up. But her age never manages to catch up with her extraordinary mathematical genius.
The same room. Hannah, a garden historian, is investigating the past of the grounds. Bernard, a professor, is there to explore the sordid scandal involving Lord Byron that took place at Sidley two centuries ago. With the help of the current inhabitants of the house, they become consumed in the history of Sidley. As their investigations, discoveries and arguments unfold, the truth about Thomasina’s childhood at Sidley is ingeniously untangled, while past and present begin to intertwine with the same grace as her equations.
- May 2011
"Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love."
Verona. 1948. The war is over. There’s a fight in the streets.
Some of the finest actors, technicians and creative forces from within Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club bring the agony and the ecstasy of the greatest love story of all time to the stage of the ADC Theatre in this year's fresh, visual and visceral Easter Term Shakespeare.
Beneath a world of bright lights, riches and romance lies an anarchic subculture of mafia warfare. The rival families of Montague and Capulet infect the streets with bloody violence. In a chance encounter, two young people fall in love.
Inspired by the films of Coppola, Pasolini and Fellini, the action will be set against a bleak Italian midwinter, flick-knives replace swords and the men wear sharp Italian suits. In the style of 'Sin City', black, white and red dominate the stage.
- April 2011
After a successful run at the ADC 'Pornography' was selected for NSDF 2011, subsequently winning:
Best Sound Design, Award For Ensemble, Buzz Goodbody Student Director Award (Patron the RSC)
“This city is never silent. It has a throb and pulse of its own. It feels latent. It feels charged. It feels sprung. As though something remarkable is going to happen.
In less than an hour, everything will change.
What you need to do is stand well clear of the yellow line.”
Violently dark. Startlingly poignant. 'Pornography' takes us into the lives of six individuals and into the worlds that lie, in constant whirling motion, behind the face of the everyday. Through the voyeuristic and visceral, we watch them fall and fragment against the backdrop of London. A London speeding towards a shattering collision of exultation and horror, whilst we begin to realise what it means to be alive in the 21st century, and whether or not this kind of isolated, disconnected existence is really worth fighting for.
- March 2011
West Side Story, many would claim the greatest musical ever written, has delighted audiences worldwide since its opening on Broadway more than 50 years ago. With a score by one of the finest composers of the twentieth century, Leonard Bernstein, lyrics that launched the career of the great Stephen Sondheim and the iconic choreography of Jerome Robbins, this modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet returns to the stage in Cambridge for the first time in several years this Lent Term, in a production featuring Cambridge’s finest talent in musical theatre. Prepare to be entranced by the beautiful melodies of Tonight and Somewhere, the irresistible rhythms of America and I Feel Pretty whilst being dazzled by the spectacle of dance and fight scenes alike, as this definitive work in the cultural landscape of the last century comes to the ADC.
- March 2011
"An old Russian widow falls in love with a painting hanging on the hallowed walls of the Hermitage. What happens when it is sent to auction, and how far will she journey to get it back?"
When darkness falls and the curtain drops on the ADC mainshow, a troupe of fabulists emerge from the depths of the theatre to spin you a yarn. Using ancient props and costumes salvaged from productions past, marvel as they create a host of characters, plucked from our enchanted hatbox. Malevolent art historians and opportunistic chandelier salesmen come to life, with entrancing music played live on stage by our transvestite accompanist. This troupe might be poor as church mice but they are just as resourceful, showing that the theatre can be a rich place by little means...
Praise for last production: 'Imaginatively staged and brilliantly conceived…it artfully married nostalgia and innovation' (Varsity)
- March 2011
This new one-act imagines the genesis of 'Frankenstein'. An innocent writing contest in Lord Byron's Swiss villa spawns surprise arrivals, rivalries and romance, and the world's most infamous monster. Byron, his companion, the Shelleys, and a surprise guest clash, picnic, and witness the birth of ... 'Frankenstein'!
- February 2011
The time and place are unknown. Two men climb down onto the stage, continuing on their journey. Neither them nor us know where they’re going, but there’s a writer in the sky who is telling them to carry on. Award winning writer of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", Milan Kundera presents “Jacques and His Master,” a play where past and present seamlessly overlap, and nothing is quite as you remembered it. The two men, Jacques and his Master, have both gambled with love, involving themselves in situations both criminal, perverse and downright bizarre. The memories of both characters are brought to life by figures from their respective pasts, forcing master and servant to confront the issues of guilt, and the thorny problems of who is ultimately responsible for one’s bad behaviour and bad luck.
- February 2011
‘I’ve got a new rule for you, mate, it’s called survival of the fittest, it’s called “fuck you – we’re the Riot Club”. Respect that.’
Posh is a play about power. The ancestors of the Riot Club boys used to rule the country, but times have changed. Over the course of a drunken dinner in the back room of an Oxfordshire pub, the pretences of the Club – of camaraderie, of harmless fun, of invincibility – are eroded and finally shattered, leaving the boys as they are – scared and alone. Posh isn’t merely an attack on a couple exclusive Oxbridge clubs, but rather about what lies behind them – elitism, arrogance, class, money, exclusivity and pack mentality on the one hand and weakness, isolation and fear on the other.
- February 2011
Noises Off is a side-splittingly hilarious comedy following the loveable cast and crew of Nothing On as they attempt to take their show from final rehearsal to final performance. The pandemonium that goes on behind the scenes, the disasters that occur front-of-stage and the incestuous relationships that breed in between are laid bare in riotous detail to the audience.
Will Lloyd, the director, be able to balance two relationships with members of the company at once? Can practically deaf old Selsdon be kept off the bottle long enough to make his entrance? How will Frederick cope in a fight when the mention of violence gives him a nosebleed?
Come along and find the answers to all of these questions and more. With seven slamming doors, six breaking windows, three near-fatal falls, and an onslaught of mistaken entrances, cues and prop malfunctions, what could possibly go wrong?
- January 2011
“This city is never silent. It has a throb and pulse of its own. It feels latent. It feels charged. It feels sprung. As though something remarkable is going to happen.
In less than an hour, everything will change.
What you need to do is stand well clear of the yellow line.”
Violently dark. Startlingly poignant. 'Pornography' takes us into the lives of six individuals and into the worlds that lie, in constant whirling motion, behind the face of the everyday. Through the voyeuristic and visceral, we watch them fall and fragment against the backdrop of London. A London speeding towards a shattering collision of exultation and horror, whilst we begin to realise what it means to be alive in the 21st century, and whether or not this kind of isolated, disconnected existence is really worth fighting for.
- December 2010
Imagine literally as many rats as you can imagine. Now imagine they’ve all brought a plus one. You’ve just imagined the situation in old Hamelin town. The bumbling Mayor and his lederhosened lackies are powerless to stop them, until an eccentric and mysterious trouble-shooter – known as the Pied Piper – shows up.
The Piper amazes all with his rat removal skills. But when the Mayor refuses to stump up, the Piper takes his revenge by stealing all the town’s children! Hamlin’s only hope lies in a plucky, young hero and his ramshackle alliance, who together must brave the trail to the Pied Menace’s secret lair in Koppelberg Hill…
The ADC/Footlights Pantomime is the biggest, loudest and funnest show of the year, where Cambridge’s finest comedians, actors and musicians team up to blow a frankly ridiculous budget. So bring all the family along for ein über-Fest of REVELRY, ROMANCE and RODENTS.
- December 2010
Arabian Nights will be a newly devised production based on the ancient stories from India, the Middle East and North Africa of the Thousand and One Nights. In this saga King Sharyar is only prevented from executing his wife because of her extraordinary skill in telling stories, for the king has had a wedding every day followed by an execution the next day since discovering his first wife’s adultery. Every time the executioner comes awaiting the day’s victim, the king is so captivated by his new wife’s thrilling tales that he pardons her for an extra day in order to hear the end of the story. Arabian Nights will be performed by a small ensemble of actors, playing a multitude of characters, bringing to life the weird and wonderful tales and characters of these ludicrous fables in new, witty and imaginative ways.
- November 2010
Danny wants to be a dentist. Cathy wants to be famous. And Adam? He just wants to be a part of it all. But Leah is scared. She feels that lately things have been getting out of hand and then something really bad happens.
When a group of teenagers discover tragedy brings harmony to their otherwise fractious lives, where’s the incentive to put things right?
The Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents their 2010 Freshers’ lateshow: DNA. First performed in the Cottesloe Auditorium of the National Theatre in 2008, it is a poignant and beguiling tale with a very dark heart; a suburban Lord of the Flies for the iTouch generation.
The playwright, Dennis Kelly, won a prestigious Fringe First Award in 2009 for his play 'Orphans' and is best known as the writer of the hit BBC3 sitcom 'Pulling'.
"Grange Hill for the Skins generation." (4 stars, What'sOnStage.com)
- November 2010
The Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents the finest new talent of the University in its Freshers’ mainshow, Relative Values.
A delightful comedy set in the early 1950's, Noel Coward's masterpiece highlights a delightful collision between starry Hollywood, stiff-upper-lip England and society's view of the perceived differences between the social classes. Havoc reigns when Nigel, the son of the Countess of Marshwood, announces his intention to marry the American actress, Miranda Frayle - to the absolute horror of his mother and servants of the house.
In the best Coward tradition, Relative Values lets the chaos escalate from one farcical turn to another, spurring delicious dialogue, skilful asides and hilarious repartee.
First performed at the time of the Festival of Britain at the Savoy, it ran for over a year, and remains one of Coward’s classic comedies of English manners.
“Wickedly Enjoyable” (Daily Telegraph)
