- February 2005
How far would you go for the person you love? How much would you change? 'The Shape of Things' is a provocative, acerbic play which exposes how superficial the relationship between a man and a woman can . The play deals with four university students trying to seek acceptance. It is a savage indictment of the modern 'makeover' culture, showing how far people force others to conform to perceptions of beauty with a blurred view of 'art' and 'reality'. Writer Neil LaBute has been described by the New Yorker as 'the best new playwright to emerge in the past decade...'.
- February 2005
In a sordid bedsit, a prostitute welcomes a client. So it seems. But what is he really looking for? And what does she really want from him? When they are joined by a second man, more questions are raised - is he just another client, a lover, or a brutal rapist? Dwelling on a passing sweetness and descending into dark demanding self-investigation, through warmth and sentimentality, flirtation, make-believe and confession, "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" is a modern-day morality play which explores the blurred lines between love, dependence and psychotic attachment.
Following the success of Cross Road Blues at the ADC in Michaelmas 2003, "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" is David Hall's second play as writer/director.
- February 2005
Shakers Restirred reflects the eighties as you have never seen them before. Following four cocktail waitresses through a hectic night, the girls take on characters ranging from the checkout girls to the classic 'yuppie'. Shakers cocktail bar is THE place to be! After work, before a club, to meet the blokes, to pick up the chicks, to drink to celebrate or drown your sorrows, for birthdays and parties to romance and sin, this is the place to be seen!
- November–December 2004
Kane's 'Cleansed' written midway through her infamous career on the cusp of her naturalistic and expressionistic phases, is perhaps the cruellest yet most redemptive of Kane's plays. It is a world where love is on trial but justice is aptly perverse and brutally ministered. Set in University buildings transformed into a sanatorium, Tinker's inmates kindle the personal and human within the institution, clinging onto scraps of faith, promise and trust where no values prevail and where ideals are defunct.
CLEANSED is presented as part of HATS's PLAYROOM DOUBLE BILL:
'The Pitchfork Disney' at 7pm
'Cleansed' at 9pm
every night November 30th - December 4th
- November–December 2004
The Pitchfork Disney is the first of Philip Ridley's grotesque and disturbing plays that were met with almost universal critical acclaim and revulsion in the nineties. In an East London flat the agoraphobic Stray twins live the world differently, surviving on chocolate and Barbiturate fuelled dreams of oblivion. A darkly comic play that unsettlingly reflects the tensions and contradictions of post-modern London life.
THE PITCHFORK DISNEY is presented as part of HATS's PLAYROOM DOUBLE BILL:
'The Pitchfork Disney' at 7pm
'Cleansed' at 9pm
every night November 30th - December 4th
- November 2004
When the Brewster-Wright's receive working-class couple Jane and Sidney into their state-of-the-art kitchen, the occupants fear the couple may more than lower the tone of their Christmas Eve: little did they imagine the chaos their party games would bring. This is the hilarious scenario of ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR's rampaging alocholics in negligees, peanut butter sandwiches and drunken dancing. Alan Aykbourn's side splitting social comedy explores a side of the festive season which the middle classes would prefer to keep hidden. The perfect anecdote to end of term blues!
- November 2004
Woyzeck, an ordinary man who endures the rat race to clothe and feed his family, is tortured by jealousy and driven to murder. A seemingly simple tale which grows more complex as the action unfolds. Georg Buchner's Woyzeck changed theatre forever: written so far ahead of its time, the play remained unperformed for 76 years. Celebrating 15 years of German unity, White Block Theatre Company invites you to experience this exciting new interpretation of a modern classic. Performed in German with surtitles.
- November 2004
To celebrate 100 years of the Entente Cordiale, White Block presents Moliere's most controversial play of a seemingly honest priest, Tartuffe. Banned for five years due to Moliere's provocative view of the church, Tartuffe contains moments of farce and razor-sharp satire. Deception, lies and obnoxious servants add up to an evening of pure delight. Performed in French with surtitles.
- November 2004
All Good Things merges romance and fantasy with a spiritual journey towards redemption. John is a man whose life is stalled at the bottom of a glass since the death of his wife until a chance encounter reawakens memories of the past. Through painful experience and poignant encounters John succeeds in rekindling his faith in life but only after his reason has been tested to the utmost.
As the themes of loss, hope and love are played out, All Good Things becomes a testament to human resistance to adversity.
All Good Things is an exciting piece of new writing that has previously been presented at a Marlowe Scriptlab, where Tom Cornford, a Globe practitioner and director at the Gate Theatre in London, directed a rehearsed reading of the play to much acclaim.
- November 2004
'Look Back in Anger' saw the birth of the prototype 'Angry Young Man' and
sparked a new wave in British theatre. John Osborne's 1950's classic is
explosive, witty and downright angry. The play is not only an exploration
of one man's impassioned demand for humanity but is also a taught domestic
drama in which the dynamics of a troubled relationship are further
complicated by the arrival of a good looking and feisty outsider. This
exciting production will be performed in week five at the corpus playroom.
- November 2004
Violent, funny, smart -- and oiled with huge amounts of alcohol:
Edward Albee's classic portrait of marital war. George, a failed
academic, and his wife Martha have a young couple over for late
drinks, and quickly turn the unsuspecting guests into weapons in
their year-long marriage battle. Layer by layer, drink after drink,
each gives away the secrets of the other's failed life – neither of
them capable of stopping the process of mutual humiliation once it
has begun.
“Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?” is one of the strongest, most
psychologically violent, and yet subtlest pieces in modern theatre.
It shocks the audience not only by the intensity of its battles, but
also with the precision with which it presents them a mirror-image of
their own life. It is a highly entertaining, funny and violent
description of what it is for people to share each others’ lives, of
their intimacy, their contempt for each other, and their recognition
that they will nonetheless carry on together.
- October 2004
Based on the events of the Hulme
and Parker murder trial of the 1950s, Folie a Deux explores the tender
relationship of two girls that spirals out of control. Trapped in 1950s New
Zealand – characterised by judgement, religion and the need to keep up
appearances – the girls take refuge in each other’s company. Creating
fantasy stories and a religion of their own, Juliet and Pauline finally
find the freedom they have been longing for. When their suspicious parents
attempt to split them up, the girls panic. Only one thing can save them now
– murder.
- August 2004
A unique mix of comedy, music, puppets and actors doomed to die.
Worried about your mortgage? Stressed about your report due in tomorrow? Well it doesn't matter, because by tomorrow you'll be dead - the world is going to end, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
Trapped in a theatre with an audience they've barely met, five actors face their impending demise by sharing memories. A half-remembered childhood incident combines with a fear of heights - and suddenly a story is born. Taking ideas from the audience and blending them with puppetry, music - and imminent doom - this is a unique experience for your final minutes.
Fully improvised and completely unpredictable, the latest show from The Uncertainty Division will capture your imagination for a few brief moments before it stops making any difference at all.
- May 2004
Four plays - 'Despairing', 'Marcos of Belsornia', 'A Sorta Fairytale', and 'Inner Circle' - that deal with madness, isolation, wolves, and park benches, brought to you by the Fletcher Players.
- April–May 2004
Novelist Helen Oyeyemi's first play raises more questions than it answers.
In the house where Aleph, Beth and Juniper live, resurrection is a weapon,
and kindness is entrapment. Aleph lovehates Beth, and Beth lovehates Aleph,
but all Juniper knows is that Beth just con't seem to stop being murdered.
One thing above all - they mustn't look out of the window.
- April–May 2004
When a teenage bopy is brought to Martin Dysart's psychiatry clinic after
blindng six horses with a metal spike he expects to find 'just another
dented little face - the usual unusual'. As Dysart drives deeper towards
the pasion that motivated Alan's crime his own inward struggle, between
what convention classes as normality and what he believes is right, rises
to the surface.
- March 2004
Condom packets crunch underfoot and breakfast is eaten straight off a mirror in The Grand Balcony, a brothel designed for the fulfilment of any conceivable sexual fantasy. With the help of Madam Irma's prostitutes, three men act out double lives as a bishop, a judge and a general. All the while a bloody revolution threatens to penetrate into the brothel and, when the state falls, its patrons of are given the chance to wield in reality the powers that they have hitherto only play-acted. Anita Berber Furniture Removal cordially invites you to be rubbed up the right way by its production of Jean Genet's masterpiece.
- February 2004
Sartre's intense vision of hell: no fire, no demons no torture devises. Hell is...other people. Three people meet in hell. Initially they try to hide from each other what brought them there. But they cannot live together without penetrating each others' intimate spheres, without forcing each other to confess who they had been and what they had done. No one is allowed to keep his secret and no one is spared the humiliation of being recognised for who he is. And yet: the more they are being hurt and the more their lives become hell, the more they become bound to each other. The play thrives on the dense, claustrophobic and yet erotic tension between the characters. We will try to portray their anguish, violence and passion in a way that evokes the audience's passions as well as captivating their intellect.
- February 2004
- February 2004
- February 2004
A love story set in colonial East Africa during the Second World War. A new country, Tanganyika, is being created with Britons, Germans, Asians and African tribes living side by side. Michael is an English farm manager, born and brought up in East Africa and Poppy a confident, idealistic, Indian girl, educated in England whose father is one of the wealthiest businessmen in the territory. Separated by class, race and outlook, their relationship grows and strains against a background of racial tensions and the war. A powerful look at the need to dissolve divisions of tribes, factions and cultural boundaries, and re-form, in the process of building a new country.
- February 2004
The story resolves around two best friends from high school, Jonathan and Vince, and Amy, a woman they both dated. Over the course of one evening, in a Motel Six room, Vince finally gets Jonathan to confess on a tape that he date-raped Amy, ten years prior. Vince, as part of his elaborate plan, has also invited Amy to dinner that evening to either play the tape or have Jonathan confess, which ever comes first. Tape examines questions of motive, memory, truth and perception.
- January 2004
Does this streetcar sound familiar? Well, here is a rare opportunity to see the original play, one of the most compelling in the history of American theatre. Tennessee William's acclaimed drama is a play of passionand tension that stages the darkest and most powerful theatrical emotions. It presents the brutal confrontation between death and desire, illusion and reality, poker and poetry. Life is a poker game and each performance will reshuffle the cards. The stage becomes a poker table - indeed a Playroom! - where the characters gamble their own desires, fears and shadows - or maybe yours. Don't miss it!
- January 2004
- January 2004
"The tale of the impossible. A house with its own soul. Energy twisted in on itself. The refined last stages of obsessive madness". Don't miss a rare chance to witness Steven Berkoff's bold adaptation of Poe's story of gothic horror and the hotly-anticipated debut of Cambridge's newest theatre company, Back to Back Productions. Drawing on the theatre of the avant-garde, with its use of mime, movement and abstract music, the audience is presented with a horror that is at times literally unspeakable. They will find themselves drawn helplessly into a vortex of incest and murder - not for the faint-hearted.
- December 2003
Joe is ten years old, severely disabled, wheelchair bound and completely dependent on her parents. She will have no life. So why is she allowed to live? Bri and Sheila have to live with the moral dilemma that nobody should have to face. Bri clowns his way through life. Sheila clings to the hope that one day, somehow, all will be right again. Throw in the questionable support of their friends and family, and the group soon begins to realise they are all experiencing a day in the death of Joe Egg. Peter Nichols' darkly comic masterpiece balances somewhere on the verge between tragedy and hilarity. 'A Day in the Death of Joe Egg' demands answers to questions that cannot be ignored, and will leave you wondering whether to laugh or cry. Presented in one of Cambridge's most unique and exciting venues.
- November 2003
Cross Purpose is a play about a shocking misunderstanding and its tragic consequences. When Jan returns home after a twenty year absence, his family don't recognise him. Desperate for happiness they will go to any lengths to find the money they need, and Jan starts to fall into a terrible trap.
- October–November 2003
Shakespeare meets Big Brother in this new piece of student writing. Deep inside the Big Brother house, one of the contestants, Julia, is getting too big for her boots. Will her housemates' conspiracy to get rid of her succeed in producing 'the unkindest cut of all'?
Adapting Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into a modern language to deal with "modern issues", this play combines elements of social satire with observation on the personal devastation produced by manipulation, spite and domestic politics to provide an exciting chance for some early Michaelmas drama.
- October–November 2003
'I'm not clever, I'm just pushy.'
(Marlene, Top Girls.)
- August 2003
We never forget. Hidden in our brains is every moment, every thought we ever had, locked away and helpless.
Now, using the very latest techniques from medical science and improvised comedy, the Uncertainty Division takes you on a voyage into the mysterious depths of the unconcious...
Every night, the ideas, memories and thoughts of one audience volunteer will become a complete story. It could be a thriller, it could be a romance - or it could be a full blown musical. Different every time - and entirely dependent on you.
In each show, we will explore the very stuff our thoughts are made of. One person will see their thoughts as never before. For everyone it will a revelation.
www.uncertaintydivision.org
- April–May 2003
- February 2003
What if four children had been locked away in darkness and complete isolatiosince birth? What if, tonight, they were to be released? How would bodies and minds reared in darkness respond to the first words, thfirst lies, the first kisses?What if you got to watch? This disturbingly comic play strips away the mask of society to expose the conflict between nature and nurture in an uncensored and fantastically brash style for an hour of schizophrenic brilliance.
- February 2003
- November 2002
An award-winning television series, Talking Heads looks wryly at the everyday quirks of human life. Now the Amateur Dramatic Club brings three of the best of these monologues to the Corpus Christi Playroom. Bed Among the LentilsSusan is the wife of the vicar. And an alcoholic. Plagued by her husband's female 'fan club' and the pettiness of the church flower arrangers, she finds solace in the arms of an Indian grocer. Her Big ChanceLesley is an actress. A serious one. So when she has the opportunity to star in a film she grabs it with both hands. Oblivious to the true nature of her starring role, her insistence on her 'professionalism' is touchingly comic. A Chip in the SugarGraham lives with his elderly mother. Utterly dependent on their relationship he is bitterly jealous when she begins a friendship with another man, and their orderly, well-structured life is threatened. NB: These performances replace David Hare's The Blue Room as previously advertised.
- November 2002
Simple: an afternoon break on the usual bench (well it's the weather for it) and a good book. A stranger who forces eye contact. Questions that make you need to loosen your collar. Stories that make you forget where you are and how to get home. A set of pornographic playing cards, some empty photo frames, a dog and a trip to the Zoo. As the park empties and New York goes home, Peter falls under Jerry's hypnotic power. His is a world where televisions murmur empty messages from above to people lost in the lodging houses of New York. Jerry no longer knows how to pray.
- October 2002
