- May 2023
‘And now our bodies are the guilty ones…’
Winner of eight Tony Awards,‘Spring Awakening: the Musical’, features an electrifying rock soundtrack that explores the journey from adolescence to adulthood in a poignant story of teenage curiosity and sexual naivety.
In 1891, a group of teenagers grapple with puberty with a lack of adult guidance. They encounter Love, loss, desire and much more in this passionate and heart-wrenching coming-of-age story; a narrative of sexual liberation, community, and learning what it is to love and to exist in a world which aims to keep you in the dark.
- May 2023
"By dread things I am compelled. I know it. I feel it. I sense the trap closing and I see what I am."
Seven years after the Trojan War and the bloody coup for the throne that led to Agamemnon's assassination, the kingdom of Mycenae holds its breath as the new queen and her lover hold Agamemnon's remaining children captive: Among them, his youngest daughter Electra, who has called on her long-lost brother to swear revenge for her father. But there is doubt; Electra will be killed that night, and her brother might never come. Time is running out.
Irisa Kwok rewrites the classic Greek tragedy, spilling blood on blood and eschewing the intervention of divine. All we know is this: The House of Atreus is cursed; the gods have set the stage for its fall. One house, one family, one day. What does it take to reveal the brutal limits of human vengeance?
- May 2023
Channel 4 Squared is an exciting new sketch show following a day's programming of a (slightly scuffed) TV channel!
In the age of streaming services, who can resist a refreshing, good old fashioned day of TV programing! Here at Channel Squared, we broadcast a wide variety of programmes catering to all your television needs- in the form of comedy sketches! From day time talk shows with a twist to a satirical look at the evening news, we’ve got the lot!
- May 2023
"Perhaps one of the last great mysteries is the one we carry inside our heads"
Mnemonic, a play originally conceived and directed by Simon McBurney and devised by company Complicite, is about more than human memory. In this production, we question not only who, but what holds memories. Through an archaeological frame, Complicite subtly compares the experience of time and place of both real people and inanimate objects. Though, can you be both? The first narrative of the play retraces the investigation of the archaeological mystery, 'Iceman', a body found somewhere between Austria and Italy and kept intact in the snow for 5,000 years. The second intertwined narrative follows Virgil as he recalls his memories with an ex-lover, Alice, while she searches for her estranged father. As the two struggle relentlessly to uncover their origins and memories, it seems the more they know, the less they understand. And so can be said for the enigmatic Iceman.
For it is a startling realisation to find that we only know a fraction of the stories we carry in our veins.
In this adaptation of Mnemonic, we highlight these ever-present human conditions through a form of bold, physical storytelling. By these means, we present a piece that is both captivating and deeply symbolic.
- April 2023
- April 2023
- April 2023
"“As long as there is one person on earth who remembers you, it isn’t over”
Set in a New England coastal town, Carousel tells the story of the tragic romance between Billy Bigelow, a troubled carnival barker, and Julie Jordan, the young woman who gives up everything for him.
Named best musical of the 20th Century by Time Magazine and featuring some of the most iconic music ever written including If I Loved You and You'll Never Walk Alone, Carousel is the classic American musical, spanning heaven and earth in its exploration of human resilience, love and forgiveness."
- March–April 2023
HORROX: A forgotten Cambridge hero
Jeremiah Horrocks came to Emmanuel College in 1632 at the age of just fifteen to study the stars. By the time he was 22 he had changed the way in which we see the Universe. Tragically and mysteriously, he was also dead….and then forgotten. Horrox brings this tragi-comic Cambridge hero back to life and to the stage to celebrate a young astronomer who became the first human to observe the Transit of Venus and answer one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: what is our place in the Universe?
- March 2023
Show Choir is back, and this time we’re bringing you your favourite songs from your teens! No one wants to grow up, not really! So why not join us to reminisce about the good ‘ol days filled with Katy Perry, Jessie J and One Direction! CU Show Choir: Teenage Dream will showcase your favourite bangers from the first two decades of the twenty-first century!
With slick harmonies, cheesy choreography and a live band, Teenage Dream will be a fun-filled hour of pop anthems, and a great way to kick back and relax at the end of term!
- March 2023
Kiss me, Kate is a joyfully jazzy musical set in Baltimore in 1948, in a theatre company who happen to be putting on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, whilst a similar story unfolds among the cast and crew. Egotistical leading man, director, and producer Fred Graham is forced to work alongside his ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi, playing opposite one another in a new production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. As the two bicker and fight, it becomes clear that they are, in fact, still in love. Throw comedy, big band jazz and dance into the mix and you'll get somewhere close to Kiss Me, Kate. This wonderful show includes the hits Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Too Darn Hot and Another Op’nin, Another Show, as well as lesser known gems such as I Hate Men and Tom, Dick or Harry.
- March 2023
Join Cambridge Footlight, Libby Thornton, for her debut comedy hour. An open mic night with a difference! Your compere - Libby! The guests - Libby! The audience - You! In this riotous hour of stand-up, watch as Libby transforms herself into kooky characters intermingled with awkward stories and stupid anecdotes. Libby-Come-Lately will take a candid look into what life is like as a young woman uncovering what one-night stands are like as a sleepwalker, the overlap between Keira Knightly and Tracy Beaker, and Waitrose balsamic vinegar. Take a break from the carnage of the outside world, and strap in for an hour of comedy carnage instead!
- March 2023
Charley’s rich Aunt, Donna Lucia, is visiting from Brazil and the timing couldn’t be better. Her presence as a chaperone will allow him and his friend Jack to ask their respective true loves, Amy and Kitty, for their hands in marriage. But time is ticking, and where is Charley’s Aunt? On learning she will be delayed by several days, they blackmail their eccentric friend, Lord Fancourt Babberley, to save their romantic plans and pose as Donna Lucia.
A wild afternoon of mistaken identity, young love, angry uncles, and trickery ensues.
- March 2023
Sweet dreams are made of this and who are Dragtime! to disagree... Come along down the rabbit hole with your favourite kings, queens and inbetweens for a glitter-fuelled journey unlike anything you've ever known...
- February 2023
Sure, sketch shows are fun, but would you want to live in one? In this show, the protagonist has no choice. Follow a day in their scripted life as they jump from one sketch to another, confronting everyday situations that inevitably spiral outside out of their control into unpredictable, absurd, and for our protagonist at least, incredibly frustrating deadends. In this show, walking down the street to work, going to the dentist or ordering a meal at a restaurant are hijacked by comedic tropes from across the broad spectrum of the sketch genre, as the protagonist’s life slowly turns into a sinister nightmare. Will you join them as they search for a way to escape?
- February–March 2023
When twins Sebastian and Viola are separated in a shipwreck but equally unaware of the other’s survival, a comedic sequence of events follow. Viola disguises herself as a young man, leading to a series of love triangles unfolding. Meanwhile, Sebastian is rescued by a sea captain, Antonio, adding to the later confusion between characters and their attempts to find love. This well-known Shakespearean comedy explores identities, romance and friendship with an all-BME cast and crew. Twelfth Night promises to be exciting and culturally diverse, bringing a fantastic energy to one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays.
- February 2023
Celebrating their 25th birthday, CUMTS brings you the gift of Gala: two evenings of musical theatre magnificence. With a dazzling cast of Cambridge’s finest musical theatre talent, accompanied by a full orchestra, Gala will be an extravaganza of all of your favourite musical theatre classics and latest hits. Dressed to the nines and brimming with glitz and glamour, these wonderful performers invite you into the world of big ballads, stunning harmonies, kick-lines and jazz hands.
- February 2023
Spring Revue is the Footlights' annual showcase featuring its graduating members performing a mix of newly-written material and the best of their previous sketches.
- February 2023
Second Generation has returned, and so has our embarrassment that our spice tolerances have sunk to the point of Nando’s Lemon & Herb.
We’re here again with the fourth iteration of the student-written sketch show, introducing new BME faces to the comedy scene. Come join us for a night that’s bringing the heat and humour to the ADC for another year! From Sima Aunty’s matchmaking mischief to watching WhatsApp break from the weight of Diwali wishes, Second Generation: The Return of the Lemon & Herb promises to be a night of fun, spice and everything nice!
- February 2023
72 years since it debuted in Cambridge, Agatha Christie's The Hollow is back.
Follow the Angkatell family as they fight for love, revenge and money in this classic Christie murder mystery.
The Angkatell family return to the Hollow, where Sir Henry and Lucy Angkatell host their cousins Henrietta, Edward and John and his wife Gerda. But when John's old flame, the fiery Hollywood Star Veronica Craye arrives, the only solution can be murder! Luckily Inspector Colquohoun is on the case, and he'll uncover more family secrets than just the solution to this crime... With witty characters, shock twists and one of Christie's trademark ingenious solutions, The Hollow is the perfect excitement for a spring evening.
- February 2023
'White: a blank page or canvas. His favourite – so many possibilities.'
George is an artist in search of his masterpiece - battling with his friends and his critics - he navigates his relationships and the everyday world around him to create something truly special that he's been planning for years.
In this Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, based on the life of the French artist Georges Seurat and his fictional great-grandson George, we see eight-time Tony Award winner Stephen Sondheim (Company, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods) and three-time Tony winner James Lapine at their best, in this stunning collaboration that will make you question the world around you and leave you amazed.
- February 2023
"TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,
Thank you for taking the time to apply for this role that you so clearly wanted. Unfortunately, this time we are not going to be able to..."
Experiencing a bit of dejavu? Reluctant recognition?
Want to cry?
Can we interest you in laughing instead?
More specifically- want to laugh for a full hour, at the ADC Theatre, Park Street, Cambridge, CB5 8AS?
For here it is- a sketch show about REJECTION!
What you have lost in your hopes, dreams, wants, desires, potential lovers, life-long aspirations and ambitions, you will GAIN in giggles!
Yes, a completely reasonable trade off...
STOP feeling ‘Sorry sorry sorry very sorry’ for yourself and come and see ‘Sorry sorry sorry very Sorry’ for yourself!
- January 2023
What would you do if wolves attacked you right now as you were reading this? You'd die, probably. And you'd die thinking, 'man, if only I had planned for this'. Instead, you frittered away your time forming relationships, furthering your career, and enjoying life. Well, for one night only, Jonathan Neary takes you through his comprehensive plans for anything and everything, so that you're never caught off guard by wolves (mostly because you'll be safely indoors, planning), unprepared for a totalitarian regime, or unsure of when to time travel to. (Jonathan Neary is a Footlight and 2021 Chortle Student Awards semi-finalist if either of those seal the deal for you.)
- January–February 2023
In 1906 Sholem Asch wrote a play about a young woman who falls in love with a sex-worker working in her father's brothel. In 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning author Paula Vogel wrote a play that brought Asch's story, and the world in which he lived, to life.
Indecent brings the haunting legacy of Jewish life at the beginning of the 20th century to the stage, confronting its pain, complexity and beauty. It is a play about immigration, displacement and the pain of losing one’s home. It also asks us what place theatre might have in the midst of suffering.
“I am done being in a country that laughs at the way I speak. They say America is free? What do you know here is free? All over Europe we did this play with no Cossacks shutting us down. Berlin, Moscow, Odessa—everywhere there is theater!”
- January 2023
A group of inmates, down on their luck, reminisce about their criminal lives: grand larceny, criminal conspiracy, and bad manners. As they recount how they landed in the joint, they hatch a plan: to escape the clutches of the prison and the neighbourhood watch, no matter the risk, and pull one last job. Can our not-so-good fellas break free? Will they break even? Will the audience break out in laughter? No characters of crime, from Mob Bosses, Members of Parliament or Supermarket Trolley-Abandoners are too out of place for this, the most sketchy of shows!!
- January 2023
“Me and Lyn, Ned and Joy, we live six feet apart. It’s the same house. But round theirs everything’s backwards. It’s funny. You live six feet apart and your paths never seem to cross”
Jez Butterworth’s Parlour Song, set in the leafy suburbia of a North London estate of manicured gardens, lollipop trees, innocent games of scrabble and clean swept driveways attempt to mask the paranoia and secrecy lurking beneath. Demolition expert Ned lives in a nice new house on a nice new estate on the edge of the English countryside. He loves his job. Barbecues. Car-boot sales. Fitness programmes. Outwardly his life is entirely unremarkable. So why is it that every time he leaves on business, something else goes missing from his home? While he is away on demolition work, his own life is slowly crumbling before his eyes.
A dark and hilarious exploration of deceit, paranoia, and what happens when neighbours start to share more than a postcode.
- January 2023
In just 24 hours, CUMTS will create and perform a brand new musical. A theme will be announced to some of Cambridge's sparkiest new writers and composers, who will then put their heads together for 24 hours of creative madness. A troupe of CUMTS performers and musicians will be on hand to bring their work to life, in what will be a whirlwind celebration of new writing. There will be sleeplessness. There will be coffee. Who knows what the final product will be? All we know, is that it will be unmissable.
- December 2022
Hamlet learns of his father's sudden death, whilst watching his mother remarry his uncle within weeks. Devastated by grief, Hamlet must grapple with relationships, family and his own unstable mind, as reality and his fantasies blur.
Our version of Hamlet invites the audience to delve into the psyche of the unstable Prince; they leave the theatre unable to distinguish the tragic events from the creations of his mind. The production will preserve an antiquity that cannot be pinned down to a particular time or age, drawing our focus to the inner psychology of Hamlet instead of the peripheral setting he finds himself in. We also hope to breathe purpose, dimension, and depth into the character of Hamlet, leaning into his youth and the difficulties that come with this.
The European Theatre Group was set up in 1957 by a group of students including Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Trevor Nunn, and has toured Europe with a Shakespeare play almost every winter since.
It is an ambitious coach-bound operation; a company of 25 or so tour with professional lighting and sound equipment, costumes and an experimental set, enabling us to put on a show absolutely anywhere.
Over time, ETG has developed a reputation at home and abroad for producing exciting, innovative, experimental and professional interpretations of classic texts, attracting the most ambitious actors, technicians and creative forces from within the university.
Sadly due to COVID, the tour has not happened since 2019, but this year IT IS BACK!
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November–December 2022
Under-represented Genders do Improv? 'The audience will be back every night for more' - predicted Dawn French*. Well we've only gone and spoiled you...365 nights later, Comic Sans has returned! Goofy, HILARIOUS, incredibly witty - and that's just women and non-binary people normally. Imagine them on a stage - oh wait ! Seize this wonderful opportunity to SEE them on stage in comic-improv brilliant-ness! Get ready...it's Comic Sans: Times New No-Man.
*or rather, Dawn would have, I'm sure, prophesied this had she seen it - we have last year's Tab Reviewer to thank for this quote.
- November 2022
Scary Old World is a sci-fi sketch show set in a drowned world, on a mysterious cruise ship, in the pits of existential despair. It draws on social satire, Ballardian dystopia and so on. It will be sometimes dark, sometimes absurd, sometimes satirical, but all of it will firmly ensconced within sci fi comedy.
It will also - shock horror - tell a narrative across its different sketches. A ship sails through the sea... but wither? One person remembers there being a time before this ship, but what was it? Watch as our protagonist scales the whole seedy social hierarchy of this little ship in their quest for the truth. If, indeed, true truth can ever be revealed...
- November 2022
Lights! Camera! Show Choir!
CU Show Choir presents an evening of your favourite songs from Hollywood and beyond! From Footloose to Mamma Mia, James Bond to Pitch Perfect, come along for an hour of fun-filled entertainment.
With four-part harmony and cheesy choreography, A Night at the Movies will be the perfect end to term
- November 2022
In the midst of woeful underfunding and ridicule from local private school St Perfectton’s Prep, join the students and teachers of Grove Park Secondary as a mysterious pirate offers them the geography field trip of a lifetime. Will they find Billy Bones’ lost treasure? Will Jemima Hawkins fulfil her dreams of adventure and find the love of her classmate Lily? And will by-the-books Geography teacher Mr Livesey learn that there is more to life than longshore drift and oxbow lakes?
Geography Trips have never been more thrilling than in ‘Treasure Island!’, a story of swashbuckling, sea-shanty singing and self-discovery.
- November 2022
It's the 90s - Tony Blair has just won the election, Katrina and the Waves have won Eurovision, and no one knows who Harry Potter is. Oasis is king - Britain is the coolest place in the world.
At the local secondary school it's a different story. Tobias, the German language assistant, watches as this ordinary school goes through an era of immense change. Miss Belltop-Doyle can't control her year 10s, Mr Pashley has been put in charge of a confiscated tamagotchi, and Miss Turner is hoping that this muck-up day goes smoother than the last.
Devised by the Wardrobe Ensemble, and performed by a cast and crew of Cambridge University theatre freshers, Education, Education, Education is a love letter to the school system, childhood nostalgia, and really bad club music. Things can only get better.
- November 2022
Girton College, 1896. Headstrong and brilliant, Tess Moffat arrives in Cambridge in pursuit of her academic studies, even though female students are denied the right to graduate. The new cohort of ‘blue stocking’ women face a tumultuous year of misogynistic professors, disgruntled male peers and a disapproving public. But even as they navigate this university steeped in tradition, they find themselves amongst a growing political movement calling for change, and a vote that would finally allow them to enter the world as graduates.
Jessica Swale’s exceptional play is a heart-warming and humorous exploration of the rights for education, the cruelty of the class divide and women’s suffrage.
- November 2022
The Marlowe Showcase is an opportunity for 12-14 graduating actors to perform in front of industry professionals, including agencies and casting directors. This year our professional director is Imy Wyatt Corner and we are opening applications for two graduating student assistant directors to work alongside Imy and contribute to the final production.
The show consists of two performances, one in Cambridge and one in London. The Cambridge show will take place at the ADC on Thursday 10th November and the London show will take place on Wednesday 23rd November.
The showcase is a fantastic experience for those who are serious about entering the creative industry once they’ve graduated from Cambridge University. It is open to all who are entering their final year at Cambridge, regardless of past experience and engagement with the theatre scene.
