- October–November 2017
"Wherever we go
Whatever we do
We're gonna go through it together"
'Gypsy' follows ultimate showbiz mother Madam Rose as she desperately tries to force her two daughters, June and Louise, into a life of Vaudeville. Even as Vaudeville is dying in 20s America, Rose is determined that her kids will be stars of the Orpheum circuit -- just so long as she can convince everyone that they are no older than 9.
When June abandons the act to become an actress in her own right, Rose forces the less talented Louise to take her spot, desperate that one of her children should be a star. Rose finds herself in a theatre world which is caught between drab Vaudeville and sleazy burlesque, but how far is she willing to go to make her daughter the star she dreamed of?
'Gypsy' is a story about love, motherhood, ambition and drive, all brought together by Styne's phenomenal score and Sondheim's lyrical wit.
- October 2017
After The Man Presents: Women delighted crowds with an 100% sold-out run in Easter 2017, it was thought that women could never be funny again. Like, by law. But fear not: The Man is back, and he’s here to present even more hilarious ladies in a night of ‘acerbic feminist comedy’ (The Tab).
What happens to the women that men can’t write? In this showcase of Strong Female Characters, Cambridge’s finest lady and non-binary comics will endeavour to find out. Fresh from every screen and stage ever, the cast-offs, the sidekicks, the non-specific love interests and the straight-up plot-devices come together to stick it to The Man. Specifically, one man in particular. Their writer.
With multiple women actually allowed on stage at once, who knows what might happen? We wager it will be something very, very funny.
This is Good Girls, Written Bad(ly).
★★★★½ – The Tab
- October 2017
★ For How Can One Study in the Presence of Seductively Stockinged Legs? ★
Cambridge, 1938.
The menfolk vow to forego all worldly pleasures and devote themselves only to pure and holy study. Meanwhile, in their isolated colleges, women are still denied full membership of the university.
But the approaching visit of the Princess of France and her three ladies, Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine threatens to upset the sexless academic paradise.
Will the celibate scholars stay strong to their vows or will the wily charms of the fairer sex prove too inviting for them?
- October 2017
A night of illusion defying our perception of reality, with the World Champion of Magic and 7 Guinness World Records holder Alexis Arts.
Have you ever wondered what an illusionist manipulates and how they misdirect our attention? Is it the five senses that help us perceive the world and are those the only ones magically tricked?
Well, we have news for you! Join us on a journey in the mechanisms that control how we experience the world, discovering what is beyond sight and hearing, beyond smell and taste and far beyond touch. We will do an experiment on the 21 elements of our sensory system and… misdirect them all!
- October 2017
The ADC's only student film night returns! In collaboration with the CFA. we'll bring you some of the best new short films featuring the finest student talent.
- October 2017
“Imagine - not caring, aw just for a second - just imagine...."
Exams are over - the real world awaits.
One last party. Five chairs, four boys, countless mistakes.
At the dawn of graduation, Benny, Cam, Timp and Mack are confronted with the uncomfortable reality of their dissipating youth and freedom. Laura and Sophie are struggling with their paradoxical desire to grow up yet circumvent responsibility. Faced with an unfamiliar kind of time pressure, they must decide whether to resist or embrace a world that doesn’t seem to want or need them.
Drugs and denial provide the only comfort to all the real and imagined menace that linger beyond the window of their clustered Edinburgh flat. Within sight but safely out of reach.
The temperature rises, the rubbish starts to pile and the emotional cocktail of responsibility, frustration and guilt tips over.
Funny and bleak in equal measure, Ella Hickson’s Boys offers an honest glimpse into the joys and tribulations of growing up. The play cleverly probes and challenges masculine conventions to ask, what happens when the party is over?
- October 2017
Divorced, beheaded, live in concert!
The six wives of Henry VIII are back ...performing their highly-anticipated show as the world-famous girl-group, SIX! Ripped from the pages of stuffy history books, this newly written musical has all the sass and sparkle of a 21st century pop concert performed by history’s most misunderstood women.
With a live band and heaps of high-energy choreography, let SIX sing you through the hook-ups and heartbreaks hidden behind Henry - this is a punchy, herstoric retelling of events that will blow away the cobwebs!
After a sold out Edinburgh Fringe run, Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society's original musical returns to the ADC. Get ready for a combination of some of the best writing, musical, acting, technical and creative talent in Cambridge!
- 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
‘swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
the jaws of darkness do devour it up’
the ~woods is open. it’s business as usual. oberon’s on the door. titania rules the floor. the mechanicals get ready for their set out the back and besotted couples seek clandestine corners - inebriated with love & flowers™. but solace sought here is seldom found. and anyway what happens in the ~woods stays in the ~woods.
hermia & lysander are in love (for now). they decide to run away together and there's only one place they can meet. but when helena, hermia's bff (for now) puts d8s before m8s and tells the jealous demetrius of the lovers' plan, the night descends into a chaotic dance of pursuit & deceit. soon the late night dwellers of the ~woods emerge from the haze only to find they themselves are tangled in this messy love octagon.
this reimagined, pleather-covered story about love, trust, and losing your mind is shakespeare ripped into the present day. after all, 'the course of true love never did run smooth'.
- July 2017
This is one of the funniest and most inventive plays by Britain's grand master of comedy.
A hilarious satire of television and a touching romantic comedy, it begins in a television studio where a hospital soap opera is being taped. One actor starts speaking gibberish; he is an "actoid" a robot and his programming is off kilter. Adam, the nephew of the producer and an aspiring writer who worships the director (once a great movie director and now a broken down has been), is on the set.
Adam starts chatting with Jacie Tripplethree, the actoid playing the nurse and finds, to his surprise, that not only can she carry on a conversation but, due to what she calls a fault in her programming, she has a creative imagination. Adam wants to build a new television series around her but the studio will not hear of it. He also finds he is falling in love with the charming robot!
Will Adam get the green light on his series? Will love prevail?
- July 2017
November 1963. Three young marines on the eve of their deployment to Vietnam set out for one final night of partying and debauchery. In his efforts to win a cruel bet with his fellow recruits, Corporal Eddie Birdlace meets Rose, a vulnerable and idealistic waitress. After an inauspicious beginning, an awkward love story begins to unfold....
- July 2017
August 1914, Wakes Week in Greenmill, and preparations are underway for the annual Rushbearing Festival. War rumbles in the distance, but, for now, family feuds, a blossoming romance and rehearsals for Morris dancing are the main preoccupations. The older men are concerned to preserve the old traditions, but as the younger ones prepare to enlist, to what will they return – if they return at all? Voted Best New Play of 2014 at the UK Theatre Awards, An August Bank Holiday Lark is warm, funny, sad, moving, and full of the shared humanity of a long established community coping with grief and the changes facing it in a world that will never be the same again.
- July 2017
The leading lady of a new musical dies on stage and the entire cast are suspects. A comedy murder mystery musical.
- June 2017
From the team behind Britney, John is a funny, nostalgic and irreverent onstage road trip across the USA: an endeavour to expose some of the lazy stereotyping that happens when we Brits think of our neighbours across the pond.
Embarking on the adventure of a lifetime across a country full of gun-toting, god-fearing, headline-grabbing maniacs, two teenagers go in search of the typical American man: in search of John Hancock.
Previous praise:
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ – Theatre Weekly, Edin Blogger, The Tab
9/10 – TCS
★ ★ ★ ★ – EdFringe Review, Varsity, Broadway Baby, Fringe Biscuit
‘Reminded me of a modern-day French and Saunders’ – A Younger Theatre
‘Moving, funny, wonderfully performed and tremendously well-written’ – Mike Bartlett
- June 2017
"Straw Man" is an hour of Rob Oldham doing stand up. It's about nostalgia, politics, and family and there are also two jokes about bums. Since graduating, Rob, a former footlight, has won the Quantum Leopard New Act Award and is in the final of this year's Amused Moose National New Comic Award. Come along to Straw Man, as Rob tries to be funny in the town he first started trying to be funny in!
- June 2017
Got an idea but don't know where to go with it?
Got a structure but can't seem to write convincing dialogue?
Got nothing but an array of nebulous thoughts which you fancy devising from with a bunch of actors and seeing what happens?
The first event of its kind, Writers' Jam will take over the ADC on the Monday of May Week. It is an opportunity for writers / directors / anyone with a creative idea which they'd like to develop to come and run a 90 minute workshop around it, with a group of actors, in one of the theatre's rehearsal spaces. No obligation to perform it at the end. It's also an opportunity for actors to get involved in a freer kind of process than rehearsals normally offer, having creative input in the development of exciting new work.
We will welcome writing for film, theatre and radio, in any stage of development. Applications will open soon!
- June 2017
Tinder has met World of Warcraft in the new online game ‘Rulers Of Magik’. ROM.com’s players win quests, fight fire-breathing anteaters and, inevitably, fall in love with the winning warrior dwarf Mary_Beard.
ROM.com’s top two players don’t know that they live opposite each other. They also don’t know they’re going to try and kill each other during the big quest. They don’t even know that they’re going to fall suddenly, truly, madly, conveniently in love with each other.
But the audience does know that - after all, this is a Rom Com. What we don’t know is where the escaped lab rat is. Or how Julia and Ian’s two ‘normal’ roommates are going to deal with all this mistaken identity nonsense. Or how any of these students are still at university when they clearly spend their time playing online fantasy games and eating cereal. There’s only one way to find out...
Play ROM.com, the new RPG romantic comedy.
- June 2017
The Cambridge Footlights International Tour Show is the biggest show of the year. Join ‘the most renowned sketch troupe of them all’ (The Independent) as they embark on another exceptional world tour, performing to over twenty thousand people across two continents. This year's tour travels to London, Edinburgh, California, Las Vegas, Boston, Chicago, New York, Cambridge, and many more. Don’t miss your chance to see the latest on offer from the group that launched many of the greatest names in comedy, including Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Mel Giedroyc, John Cleese, Miriam Margolyes, Hugh Laurie, Mitchell and Webb, Richard Ayoade, Olivia Colman, John Oliver and Sue Perkins.
- June 2017
"YOU'RE JOKING. NOT ANOTHER ONE. Oh for God's sake, I can't honestly, I can't stand this. There's too much politics going on at the moment, why does she need to do it?"
Brenda from Bristol, on hearing about the snap panel show now on 8th June
That's right, Buzzcocks is BACK boys!
Come celebrate exercising your democratic vote with your politicised panel pals. We'll be playing all your favourite improvised panel show games now with a general-election theme. (And some new games too, depending on what the campaigns throw at us...) We'll announce the exit poll results, update you with the live feed as it comes through, and try desperately to keep some kind of political balance (ish. Probably not really.)
It's the most important thing you'll do on the 8th June.*
*No but seriously, do vote first. In fact we might have some sort of 'entrance only by proof of having voted thing'. 'Cos then we can throw out the Tories!!!!
(Only joking.) (Or am I.)
- June 2017
The Côte d'Azur town of Beaumont-sur-Mer has provided rich pickings for Lawrence Jameson, schmoozing and seducing amongst the wealthy elite and nouveau riche ladies who gather around the casinos and yacht parties. With generous kickbacks to the local police chief to keep the law on his side, Lawrence happily promises everything but delivers nothing except impossible dreams and lightened purses.
When small-time hustler Freddy Benson starts working the same targets Lawrence sees an opportunity to take on a protégé. However, it soon becomes clear that the town isn’t big enough for the both of them and the two conmen have to agree on a winner-takes-all showdown.
The tunes and the laughs come thick and fast as Lawrence and Freddy try all their best tricks to swindle $50,000 from Christine Colgate, ‘The American Soap Queen’. Who ends up the winner? You’ll have come along and see us to find out in this glitzy, fabulous, sophisticated, lavish and completely hilarious musical comedy extravaganza!
- May 2017
Winner of the Footlights' Harry Porter Prize 2017.
When a young girl is forced to write an essay on "How Did Stalin Rise To Power?", or fail sixth form, she decides to manipulate a boy in the year below into doing it for her. Does it all go to plan, with no disastrous consequences? Come find out!
The Harry Porter Prize is an annual new writing competition for a one-hour comic play set up in memory of the late Dr Harry Porter, Footlights' long term senior archivist. This year the ex-Footlight judge is none other than comedian and writer John Finnemore (Mitchell & Webb, John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, Cabin Pressure).
- May 2017
The Lady Smoker is back! Join a stellar line-up of female and non-binary comedians for a night of side-splitting laughter.
- May 2017
Bedroom Farce is a hilarious comedy by legendary British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, set over the course of one night in the bedrooms of three couples: Ernest and Deila, Jan and Nick, and Malcolm and Kate. A fourth couple, Trevor and Susannah are having problems and their presence at Malcolm and Kate's housewarming party is dreaded by all. With Nick stuck in bed, Jan goes alone, but upon seeing Trevor, an old flame, things don't go quite as she planned. Nobody gets much sleep as people end up in and out of each other's bedrooms, in a rib-tickling insight into the private lives of the English.
- May 2017
A year after its debut, Cambridge Shorts returns after three sell-out nights.
Come and see the best that Cambridge film making has to offer.
- May 2017
For one fleeting night, Hot Cross Men are smashing up the ADC stage with some of the loosest, silliest and funniest improvised comedy in Cambridge. These comedy cowboys were fermented in the nourishing womb of the Cambridge Impronauts, before valiantly taming the bucking bronco of student improv with their ever muscular thighs. But after they’d milked every drop of sweet laughter from their audiences, the trinity shattered. Colin went on to act in shows like the Footlights Pantomime and ETG Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Haydn became arguably Footlights vice president. Ted went to London, where he learnt improv from the pros.
But nothing compared to the satisfying nectar of their friendship, so last term the trio was reborn in the IVF lab of Pembroke Cellars. Now they’re better than ever; ready for the ADC, and certainly ready for you. These boisterous beasts have improv oozing from their every hole, and they’re offering you a taste of the action. They’ve got no narrative, no theme, nothing’s planned, and it’s been an ordeal to make sure Ted performs clothed. They’re red hot, Red Cross, red men redemption. Hot Cross Men.
- May 2017
A one-night entente cordiale of stand-up, featuring past, present and future Footlights Ruby and Raph. (Music and lyrics by Cardinal Wolsey).
Previous praise:
‘An intelligent and uproariously funny illustration of everything Cantabrigian comedy can and ought to be’ – TCS, 9/10
'Keane proved herself to be Queen of the call-back' – The Tab, ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
‘This ex-Footlights team will be very hot property in years to come’ – EdFringeReview, ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
‘Yeah Raph's alright I suppose’ – Ruby
- May 2017
Write. Rehearse. Perform.
The Wanderer walks the earth in search of all the dark and strange stories of the world.
In just seventeen hours our teams must write, rehearse and perform their pieces. Will they be able to put on a show that impresses even the weary Wanderer? For one night only the ADC stage will be home to some of the most curious and bizarre tales the student scene can cook up.
- May 2017
The place is Venice. The time is a few years from now. After a period of political and religious upheaval, this once famous city has been submerged by flooding. The world has been thrown into disarray and in Venice two clear groups have emerged: those above the water and those down below. As the former borrow money from Shylock - confined to the submerged Venetian slums - this Jewish matriarch seizes her opportunity for revenge.
Shakespeare’s most divisive play comes to the ADC stage, exploring what happens when society steals all it can.
In a world where the rich make the rules and chaos is the currency, how easy is it to take revenge when you no longer have anything to lose?
- May 2017
Footlights bring you the best sketches, songs and stand-up in an hour of non-stop, back-to-back fun-filled hilarity. The material is always original and always varied. It can be soft and silly, rude and spikey, wordy and nerdy or a little surreal; whatever the style, it's always 'uproariously funny' (Varsity).
And this time, for the FIRST TIME EVER, all the comedians will be from Cambridge's BME community.
We have a very special guest headliner, Cambridge and Footlights alumnus AHIR SHAH. He began doing comedy occasionally at the age of fifteen, and over the course of the last decade his status on the circuit has skyrocketed from "curiosity" to "interloper". Shah's sharp, intellectual brand of stand-up features a blend of philosophical inquiry, political vigour, and sweet gags. Check him out here: http://ahirshah.com/
- 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.
- May 2017
1 hour. 1 bard. 1 million ways this could go wrong….
Will’s dropped his manuscript of “The Complete Works” and the pages have got muddled. The best of the bard mixed with the scenes that didn't necessarily make the cut. And he only has a week to put a show together…
“The Shakespeare Scrapbook” combines some of the greatest scenes of Shakespeare with spoofs, sketches and silliness to create a night of Renaissance revels.
- May 2017
"Dear Mother.
I do not understand what this war was for."
Based on Sebastian Faulks's international bestselling novel, 'Birdsong' tells the story of a soldier haunted by his past. Trapped in the trenches of the First World War, Stephen Wraysford relives in overwhelming memories his love affair of seven years earlier, when he lived in Amiens during peace-time. As the War unfolds, Stephen finds himself pulled closer and closer back to Amiens, back to the Valley of the Somme.
- April 2017
- April 2017
- April 2017
The Full Monty is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally and score by David Yazbek.
In this Americanized musical stage version adapted from the 1997 British film of the same name, six unemployed Buffalo steelworkers, low on both cash and prospects, decide to present a strip act at a local club after seeing their wives' enthusiasm for a touring company of Chippendales. One of them, Jerry, declares that their show will be better than the Chippendales dancers because they'll go "the full monty"—strip all the way. As they prepare for the show, working through their fears, self-consciousness, and anxieties, they overcome their inner demons and find strength in their camaraderie.
- April 2017
This fast-moving and exciting new stage adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' famous adventure story
effectively captures the novel’s universal themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness.
Edmond Dantes is a young man who has what appears to be the perfect life. About to become the captain
of a ship, he’s engaged to a beautiful and kind young woman, Mercedes, and he’s well liked by almost everyone who knows him. However, this perfect life stirs up dangerous jealousy among some of his so-called friends. Danglars, treasurer of Dantes’ ship, envies Edmond’s early career success; Fernand Mondego is in love with Dantes’ fiancée and so covets his amorous success, while Edmond’s neighbour, Caderousse is simply envious that Dantes is so much luckier in life than him. Together the three men draft a letter falsely
accusing the young man of treason. Arrested on his wedding day, Dantes is brought before the public prosecutor, Villefort who discovers that Dantes’ innocent actions may endanger his own political ambitions. He decides to send Edmond to the notorious Chateau d’If prison, for life.
Many years later Dantes escapes, acquires a fortune and a new identity as The Count of Monte Cristo.
He then sets about taking revenge on those responsible for his false imprisonment ..... with devastating consequences.
