- November 2013
Alice Naylor is having the family round. Son Henry’s got a new car with a football sticker on the back, Other Son Gavin’s brought Thornton’s Continentals, and Husband Roger has taken to painting everything. Not even a nice colour. Lilac. That's a shit colour. Normally, Alice would take this all in her stride, but the thing is, she’s gone and got herself in a coma.
From writer Pete Skidmore (“destined for great things”, Sally Harrison, Woolyback Productions; Smashed Shakespeare: Hammered Hamlet; Footlights smokers; CowsDrinkMilk), and the team behind “When the Rain Stops Falling”, “The Music Box” and “For Colored Girls”, comes a relentlessly inventive pitch black comedy based on everyone’s true story. “An Earlier Heaven” illuminates the universal cracks in family life, and gives an uncompromising voice to the secret loves and hates everyone harbours.
- November 2013
Ten men. Early 20th Century Europe. One day. Grappling with their appalling situation and each other, life for a soldier in the First World War is never easy.
- November 2013
The Other Prize has long been recognised as a primary vehicle for uncovering exceptional student writing in Cambridge. This year's winner, Occupied, follows a group of students' attempts to challenge the “theatrical establishment” and occupy the Corpus Playroom. Inspired by the controversial Lady Mitchell Hall Occupation in 2011 it takes a humorous (though hopefully optimistic) look at the trials and tribulations of student activism.
- November 2013
“I wanna climb back inside my mum. What’s wrong with that?”
The enduring story of Oedipus, the man who murdered his father and slept with his mother, is hurled from classical Greece into the “unimaginable wastelands” of present-day north London, as full of riots, filth and decay as ancient Thebes.
The twentieth century’s revolutionary master of stylised physical theatre, Steven Berkoff offers a searing and visceral reinterpretation of Sophocles’ enduring classic.
Don’t miss this intimate showcase of Cambridge’s newest dramatic talent.
“The bravest, most exciting and moving Greek tragedy in years” (The Sunday Times)
- November 2013
In an immersive and engaging approach to performance, ONE BY ONE breaks theatre right down to the essentials, with only one person in the audience. Spanning across a variety of spaces in the Corpus Playroom, a cycle of simultaneous performance pieces will provide a spectator experience varying from the voyeuristic to the confrontational.
- November 2013
BEAST beast [beest] noun 1.any nonhuman animal, especially a large, four-footed mammal. 2.the crude animal nature common to humans and the lower animals: Hunger brought out the beast in him. 3.a cruel, coarse, filthy, or otherwise beastlike person. 4.the beast, the Antichrist. Rev. 13:18.
Egon is a painter. Valie is a prostitute. Are they in love, or is it lust? Lust can be beastly, but so can decay.
In the intimacy of the Corpus Playroom, a relationship begins, unfolds and dissolves in Elena Bolster's acclaimed verse play.
- November 2013
Neurotic movie geek Allan Felix escapes into the world of classic films after his wife walks out on him. Humphrey Bogart seems to have a special way with women, and Allan is encouraged to find new love by imaginary conversations with the ghost of his masculine hero. His married friends, Dick and Linda also help out. But after a series of unsuccessful dates, Allan’s quest for love takes an unexpected turn when he finds himself in love with Linda. Play it again, Sam is a show about failed relationships and new hope with a dash of comedy, Casablanca and the seventies.
- November 2013
- October–November 2013
Three plays brought to the British stage for the first time, in an evening showcasing the best drama to come out of Latin America in the last thirty years. In ‘Secret Obscenities’, two flashers meet on a park bench in Santiago, and soon discover that they may have even more in common than they initially assumed. Then, in ‘Bony and Kim’, a pair of Puerto Rican criminals inadvertently become media sensations when they start robbing fast food restaurants, only to find out that the life of a celebrity isn’t quite as glamorous as they’d hoped. Finally, in ‘Looking Into the Stands’, a bull takes pity on a hapless Venezuelan matador, and the two strike up a conversation about their respective values, careers and dating prospects.
- October 2013
HATCH. returns- all new for Michaelmas 2013!
Cambridge's number one new writing showcase features extracts from plays, poetry and prose... All performed by HATCH's wonderful troupe of HATCHling actors.
Come one, Come all
- October 2013
SPLEEN is a thrilling new sketch show brought to you by between four and six Cambridge comedy babes (as seen in Footlights’ Smokers, Tab TV and the Wolfson Howler).
Excuse me:what's it all about? The whole thing is set to be five of the most exhilirating five nights. Sketches and moments of stand-up and singing/guitar. There'll be a whole lot of things to admire, including one sketch about a dirty sink. It takes place in the Corpus Playroom theatre and tickets can be diversely purchased (cash, card, internet, a ticket office).
Previous praise for the writers and performers:
‘…inflicted some proper suffering on my exhausted vocal chords.’ – Varsity
‘…some of the best Cambridge comedy has to offer…’ – The Tab
- October 2013
Find out what happens when you send a playwright to go and interview thirty 10 year olds across Britain about their life and turn their thoughts into a play. In Monkey Bars these children words are spoken by adults. Not adults playing children, but adults playing adults, in adult situations. Be ready for a play which reminds us what being a child was like, and forces us to ask uncomfortable questions about adulthood. 'Fresh from a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival, Fringe First 2012 Award-winner, Monkey Bars is a revelatory verbatim show that is funny, touching and endlessly surprising.'
- August 2013
On a midnight whim, a wealthy young couple, fresh from dancing, take a shortcut through the park. They’re surprised by a down-and-out, who cajoles them into visiting his sick mother. The police, sent by their worried parents, burst in and the shock finishes the old woman. In the aftermath, the couple lose their illusions about the world and each other.
This dynamically physicalized production is adapted from Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘King & Queen of the Universe’, by a winner of the Harry Porter Prize 2013 and the National Radio Drama Award 2012, whose work has been described as ‘of an almost sickeningly high standard’ (Varsity).
- September 2013
'What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?'
In this lively touring production of Shakespeare's brilliant play, freshly returned from storming Tokyo, girls play the boys, boys play the girls, and a dog (sort of) plays the dog. A bare stage will be filled with live music, physical comedy, and serious moral dilemmas.
Proteus and Valentine are best friends, but they have very different opinions about love. While Proteus stays at home writing his girlfriend terrible poetry, Valentine heads to the big city where he won't have to listen to it. Things get complicated, though, when they develop rather similar opinions about the lovely Silvia.
Meanwhile the girls decide it's not just men who can go on adventures, and set out from home to get their way. But things will become a lot more complicated, and a lot darker, before they can all just call it a day and get married.
- October 2013
You've ignored the Facebook event, unfollowed the Twitter account and retroactively disdained the MySpace page. Now see the stand-up show the Internet is calling "review pending" - In Real Life.
After writing and performing stand-up and sketches at Smokers throughout Cambridge and in the acclaimed Three White Guys (**** - The Tab), Jamie Fraser presents his first full hour of stand-up at the Corpus Playroom for one night only.
Jamie Fraser spends a lot of time on the internet. Listen to him talk about it, IRL.
"Provoked the loudest guffaws of the night" - The Tab, "cracking plots and punch-lines that had the audience howling".
- October 2013
- October 2013
A horn honks and a man is flattened. Blood trails behind a van which splutters smoke and escapes with an assassin at its wheel. A weeping hairdresser clutches the man's body in his trembling hands. He wipes the tears from his eyes and follows the van's red path through the gloomy London streets...
'I've come about the room.'
The Ruffian on the Stair is a darkly comic nosedive into 1960s Britain that wades through the crime and grime of its suffocating capital city. Bleak, humorous, and provocative, Joe Orton's one-act play explores the darker side of the Swinging Sixties.
She's the tenant of the room. He's the ruffian on the stair.
'People are profoundly bad but irresistibly funny.' – Joe Orton
- June 2013
Florence, high summer. The flowers are in bloom, the choirs are singing and the tourists are horrifying monsters with a taste for human flesh.
Fortunately, humanity stumbles across one last line of defense, as Nikita - a Venezuelan opera-singer who moonlights as an assassin - teams up with Dante - an Italian hotel receptionist with a penchant for murdering annoying holiday-makers. It's a race against time as, together, the two of them must find the source of the tourism virus before they too become infected.
Ultimately, it's a heart-warming and hilarious story with one simple message: true love conquers all - up to and including wolfmen in flip-flops.
Written by acclaimed Venezuelan playwright Rodolfo Santana, 'Tourists' Influence' comes to the British stage for the first time, in a translation by Charles Philip Thomas.
- June 2013
‘There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend… One day the black will swallow the red’.
New York, 1958. Mark Rothko is painting his largest scale work to date, anxious about a rising new generation of artists and the claim that he has ‘sold out’. Ken is an aspiring young artist and Rothko’s new assistant. In a conversation taking place over the course of several years, the two men begin to learn that there is more at stake than just Art.
See the Playroom transformed into an artists’ studio, and inside the psyche of one of the twentieth century’s most controversial painters. Winner of six Tony Awards on its 2010 debut, including ‘Best New Play’ and ‘Best Featured Actor’ for Eddie Redmayne as Ken, John Logan’s unique meditation on art and death (and everything in between) is already set to become a contemporary classic.
- June 2013
This is Helen’s new world: a spotless living room/diner, a bread-winning husband, Danny, and a beautiful little child, Sean. It is Danny and Helen’s first romantic night in since Sean was born and they have important news to discuss – excitement is in the air. But this veneer is thin – easily broken by the loud slam of the hall door, the turning of the living room door handle and the unwanted arrival of Liam, Helen’s brother. Silence welcomes him. And the questioning starts. Is that blood Liam? Has there been an accident?
Orphans is about impossible choices – the three characters are confined to a small room while the weight of the past, of isolation and of love pins them down. What are their priorities? Can they hold their family together through horror? Will they choose to be a monster for love? And when is one more lie a lie too many?
- June 2013
“You put rags in your mind, you got nothing.” 1950: Jamie and Dee meet in prison. Two girls, one white, one black; with 9 years, each other, and not a hell of a lot else. They play, they fight, they fantasize and, above all, they practice. Because practice makes perfect and when they’re out of here they’ve got plans. They’re going places. Then its 1959 and time for those plans to be realised. But life on the outside ain’t no picnic, and surviving is going to cost them everything they have.
Following the lives of two women in their struggle against poverty, segregation and abuse, And I And Silence is a play that explores our ability to transcend our surroundings. In Jamie and Dee’s struggle to survive, can fantasy ever be enough?
Naomi Wallace’s play was named one of Lynn Gardner’s Best Plays of 2011, after its premier at the Finborough Theatre in London.
- June 2013
It’s almost impossible for a standup comedian to come across well when promoting themselves. I mean, I can throw glittery adjectives about, but it’s not like I’m an estate agent referring to some maisonette as ‘elegant’ and ‘well-appointed.’ (Am I elegant? Am I well-appointed?) Fundamentally, the undercurrent of this entire charade is - all too obviously - 'GIVE ME YOUR MONEY AND I WILL TALK AT YOU.'
Ahir Shah is an elegant, well-appointed, three-bedroom standup comedian. He offers easy access to local amenities and good natural light.
'Destined to become one of the brightest stars in the British comedy firmament...a frighteningly intelligent gagsmith.' - The Scotsman
'An intense, exciting performer whose act crackles with wit, his energy holding the audience captive until lights out.' - FringeGuru
'Certainly the most promising young stand-up I’ve seen in a long time.' - Spoonfed
- May 2013
‘The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.’
Conrad’s canonical novel is adapted into an epic one-man show narrated by Marlow, an English sailor given the task of making contact with Mr Kurtz, an elusive ivory trader working deep inland. Marlow describes in visceral detail the shocking and rapacious nature of European ivory-trading and colonialism on the African continent at the turn of the 20th century.
Engaging with a brutal but inescapable aspect of Europe’s shared colonial history we are left with only:
‘The horror! The horror!’
- May 2013
"She's mad. She needs therapy."
"You are her therapy, Doctor."
Fifteen years have passed since political prisoner Paulina suffered at the hands of her captor: a man whose face she never saw, but can still recall with terrifying clarity. Tonight, by chance, a stranger arrives at the secluded beach house she shares with her husband. Paulina is convinced that the stranger was her tormentor and must now be held to account...
Death and the Maiden is one of the most successful and highly acclaimed works of twentieth-century drama. A profoundly moving indictment of the torture carried out by fascist regimes across the globe, it has become a modern classic lauded both for the power of its message and the deceptively simple skill of the playwright in putting that message across. Winner of the 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, Death and the Maiden is one of the most important, thrilling and deeply humane plays of our time.
- May 2013
Armed with boundless imagination, the Cambridge Impronauts are taking you to a far away land with their on-the-spot creation of an outrageously new fairy tale. Inspired by audience suggestions and original music, they convert the stage into a fantastic, new world with unforgettable characters and a gripping storyline.
After a sold-out run with their Michaelmas term production (The Revolution Will Not Be Improvised) that left The Cambridge Student "in stitches for practically the entire hour", the Impronauts are at it again with “Once Upon a Time”. Led by talented performers that have been called out by The Tab as "wonderfully charismatic" and "endearing and entertaining throughout", flashback to your childhood and erase those bedtime stories with a new one complete with adventure, love, and downright hilarity.
- May 2013
“Does anyone leave this hospital alive?” “Yes, sometimes with all the right bits too, just not necessarily in the right order.”
Surgeons is an original, hour-long comic play set in the staff room of a failing hospital during an inspection. Pitched somewhere between a black comedy and a farce, it owes as much to the Carry-On films as it does to Peep Show.
Over the course of the play the characters will grapple amongst themselves to ask the questions that really matter: ‘What happened to the canary?’, ‘Who is that in the cupboard?’ and ‘Why does it smell of glue in here?’
“I hardly think this is a laughing matter.”
- May 2013
‘You see…I believe in the god of carnage. He has ruled, uninterruptedly, since the dawn of time.’
Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play and adapted into a film by Roman Polanski, 'The God of Carnage' is one of the most successful and acclaimed plays of recent years.
Ferdinand Reille, 11, has injured Bruno Vallon, 11, in a violent altercation. Their respective parents are meeting to discuss how best to straighten out the children’s unruly behaviour. Will it be an evening of mature and rational discussion? Or a night of playground politics and spoilt sulkiness?
What happens when the grown-ups bicker like the kids? What’s it like when the kitchen sink is thrown out the pram? And who on earth is the god of carnage? The naughty step is nigh.
Yasmina Reza’s thrilling play, in a punchy translation by Christopher Hampton, is savagely funny and wildly entertaining.
- April–May 2013
"Welcome to Beachy Head, East Sussex, the third most popular suicide spot in the world. Dreadful, isn't it? Only third."
A member of Beachy Head's Chaplaincy Team, Carol, has her work cut out when it comes to saving people from the brink. Join her as she goes above and beyond the call of duty to save depressed romantic Miles, and attention-seeking ex-pop star Randy. A kiss, a date in a greasy spoon cafe, a fight on the cliff tops, an international concert tour, can they help each other find purpose and happiness after all?
From the writer of 'It's Complicated' (Footlights Harry Porter nominee 2012, "wonderfully amusing" - Broadway Baby) and 'Guido!' (“Impressive…ridiculous…really, really fun” - Cambridge Tab) comes a brand new, poignant and genuinely daring new comedy, sensitively exploring the taboo themes of depression and suicide.
- April–May 2013
Jim: Have you been stalking me?
Fred: Do I look like a stalker?
Jim: Yes.
Jim Swain has just seen his latest screenplay, The Journey, turned into a blockbuster smash. But Fred Savage, a mad, bearded homeless man, isn't happy for him. Whilst Jim lives the high life as a successful writer, his pockets lined with cash, Fred stumbles through the cold, treacherous streets of New York, bitter and resentful. The Journey was his idea, Fred claims, a supposedly autobiographical epic about a nasty CIA conspiracy dedicated to his undoing, which Jim overheard him telling to John Kelly (God rest his soul). Fred wants nothing but to exact justice on Jim, so he follows the sycophantic screenwriter from Broadway, down Sherman Avenue, across Dyckman Street, to Riverside Drive, a secluded spot overlooking the Hudson River.
Riverside Drive is a black comedy by renowned humourist Woody Allen.
- March 2013
Helena Montague has wanted to be a coroner since she was a little girl. And she's now got a degree and some relevant experience, so what's stopping her? The thought of morgues? Hoards of mannequins? Latent feminism? Or something more or less sinister?
Join some inexplicably talented Corpus Christi College first years at their one and only Playroom for a confused evening of bewildering new drama:
POST MORTEM
'I think we're going to need a fresher body'.
- March 2013
When Christopher reveals he is Idi Amin’s son, his doctors must determine whether he is telling the truth – or simply mad.
In Blue/Orange, the creaking Health Service is exposed for being overstretched, underfunded and intensely competitive for its employees. This situation impacts on its patients, leaving people like Christopher lacking unified care. His mental state has led him to hospital – and his heritage may keep him there.
His doctor, Bruce, is determined to see him released to lead a freer life. Senior Consultant Robert is more cautious, but with a research project on race-related mental illness, whose best interests are really at heart?
Blue/Orange questions power, hierarchy and prejudice, and shows Joe Penhall’s writing at its most commanding.
- March 2013
- March 2013
There were five in the Ward, then the Girl came in. She affects everyone - a charmingly cynical contagion. She must leave before the real disease.
Leaving The Ward is a new dark comedy about madness, sadness, disillusionment and disquiet - what it means to fear and live.
"It’s October. How long she has been lying amongst those leaves, he says, nobody knows. The camera takes her in. The woman can’t talk. Blood has dried her face."
- March 2013
Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, in a translation that hums with rhythm and poetry, is an all-female tragedy of passion, oppression and reputation. After her husband’s funeral, proud matriarch Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year mourning period upon her household. Her five daughters are locked inside the house, with only their chores and frustrations to occupy them. Then a man enters their lives... As jealousy and suppressed sexuality surface, the women tear each other apart, and the effects of Bernarda’s cruelty endangers more than the girls’ liberty.
- March 2013
- February–March 2013
Kafka's death-wish was for his works to be burned. His only friend, Max Brod, published them instead. Almost a century later, both suddenly appear in 1980s Leeds suburbia, the home of Sidney and Linda. Via a downtrodden northern wife, gratuitous humiliation of a tortoise, and the importance of phallic dimensions, Kafka's Dick roars from inter-war Prague to the cocktail party of posterity inside the Gates of Heaven. Brought into hilarious high-definition in the confined space of Corpus Playroom, Bennett's lightning-paced, 'irresistible farce' forces the audience to re-examine their notions of fame, reputation and respect.
