- November 2017
“And then?”
“The war burst like a hurricane.”
She stared before her at unspeakable things.
On a broken-down train under London, a man crippled by the Great War meets a woman whose dreams of future cataclysm are slowly killing her. This play brings to life the short story of the same name by H. G. Wells, which explored the coldly absurd horror of global war and mutually assured destruction decades before the Cold War.
- November 2017
"To touch, to move, to inspire. This is the true gift of dance"
The finest dance talent in Cambridge comes together to bring you an eclectic mix of different styles, original choreography, and story telling within the span of just 24 hours.
- November 2017
DRAGTIME: XXXMAS Show
Cambridge's most wholesome and only Drag Collective are coming to the ADC for one night only! With dancing, singing, lipsyncing and everything inbetween, join us for our most ambitious and varied performance to date. Kings, Queens, and inbetweens!
- November 2017
Buckle up as the CU Show Choir take you on a trip to Hollywood!
Fresh from our win at Nationals, join our brand new lineup as we sing and dance our way through movie soundtracks, TV themes and award-winning songs. From classic Disney to La La Land, expect glitz, glamour and mashups on our one night journey to the City of Stars.
- November 2017
Nominated for the Footlights Harry Porter Prize 2017, “Sherlock Bungalow and the Diabolical Treasure” is a fast-paced, gag-filled, absurd parody of Holmes and Watson tales. When the Queen is murdered, our heroes, Bungalow and Watson, must solve their most fiendish case yet. Their investigation reveals a conspiracy which stretches to the top of British society. And no, we’re not talking about Ben Nevis.
Described by Porter Prize Judge John Finnemore as "Not my winner", it's going to be a cracker.
- 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
Emerging from the silence, a voice resonates: Death warns Sāvitri that the time of her dear husband Satyavān has come. Armed with compassion, wisdom, and the sheer power of love, Sāvitri engages Death in a battle to claim her husband. But can one woman outwit even Death?
Based on an episode from the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahābhārata, this tale of human passion and spiritual devotion is given a stunning and evocative musical soundscape by the English composer Gustav Holst.
- November 2017
Katherine Murphy, Larry Carson and George Fairley served the American army in Afghanistan.
Now, Katherine Murphy is dead. George is in prison, accused of her rape but unable to face his memories of that day. Larry is decorated for heroism, but is increasingly cold to his wife and daughter.
As politicians try to manipulate the three veterans for their own purposes and their memories and mental health become tangled with lies, the facts become increasingly difficult to find – and we begin to wonder whether the truth as we know it is really the truth that we wish to believe in.
‘The Glass Cage’, an original musical from composer Noah Fram, breaks down what we think we know, forcing us to question our own belief in a concrete reality whilst challenging the assumptions and struggles of a woman in the military, the institutional wrongs exerted on both serving and ex-service men and women, the trauma of war and sexual assault, and the nature of memory.
- November 2017
“Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”
Chicago. A city of jazz and gangsters, prohibition and poverty. Amongst the murk of the Great Depression, there’s room for a small time crook like Arturo Ui to make a name for himself.
Ui and his henchmen just want to look after you, to offer protection for workers, for jobs, for businesses. Nothing to fear. But a little bribery here, some harmless corruption there, and soon something much more dangerous takes hold.
Written in exile in the 1940s, the play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II.
- November 2017
In the middle of the Mojave Desert, dozens of miles from the nearest pavement, a lone phone booth stands on a dirt road. One evening, in the mid 1990's, the phone starts ringing...
MOJAVE is a devised piece of multimedia theatre which incorporates a live DJ score, physical theatre and projection to tell this incredible story. Based entirely on real transcripts and audio recordings, we follow Goddfrey ‘Doc’ Daniels as his singular obsession with calling a phone number in the back of a magazine leads to the world’s first viral cult sensation. MOJAVE tells the true story of the Mojave Desert phone booth: how it was discovered, how it rose to cult status and how it became a place where being miles away from the nearest sign of civilisation was the only way to feel connected
- October 2017
Footlights bring you the funniest songs, sketches, monologues and standup 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 spiky, wordy and nerdy or a little surreal; whatever the style, it's always 'uproariously funny' (Varsity).
- 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.
