- February 2014
A pearl necklace broken on the floor. A bloodstained yellow motorcar. A green light always just out of reach.
Welcome to the 1920s. In this innovative new adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, see a fresh take on the American novel that defined a generation.
- February 2013
He's the most contemptible, sly and supercilious slave known to man. A low-down good-for-nothing liar. But when trouble raises its ugly head, a little lying can go a long way.
It's 200 BC and in the foetid streets of Athens stands Calidorus, a strapping young man-about-town with his head in his hands. He's in love you see, with a beautiful slave girl called Phonecium. But young love comes at a price, a particularly high one when a sadistic pimp is involved, and the evil Ballio has received an offer that he can't refuse. Our hero has one day to stump up enough cash to save his Phonecium and if he fails, she'll be sold to a merciless Macedonian officer. What can he do but to turn to the one and only person that could help him achieve the impossible, his father's silver-tongued slave: Pseudolus?
The Downing Drama Society is bringing back the bad-boy of Roman Comedy, for a three night extravaganza of ribald farce. Enter the salacious world of Plautus, and discover the esoteric delights that have been suppressed and censored for centuries.
- September 2011
Now in its fifth consecutive year, Pembroke Players Japan Tour will be taking Shakespeare's Twelfth Night to a range of venues in England and Japan. Visiting schools, universities and professional theatres both in rural and urban Japan during September, the tour will also feature a home run in Cambridge at the beginning of Michaelmas term.
Transported to 1940s civilian England, the characters of Twelfth Night resort to music, drink and trickery to distract themselves from death and unrequited love. Dealing with chaos, cons and crossed wires, their lives veer between the comic and the tragic as they look for entertainment and affection in Shakespeare's iconic play.
- March 2011
“We’re on a stage, my darling! And what’s a stage? Well, don’t you see? It’s a place where you play at being serious. A place where you act out a play. And that’s what we’re going to do now – play, only seriously....”
Pirandello’s ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ plunges the audience into a struggle between acting and living. It is an exploration into what makes an actor true and the transformation of a character from paper to play. A small group of unsuspecting actors are abruptly interrupted by mysterious characters who are requesting the work of an author to complete their story. The audience sees the scandalous lives of these characters unfurl in front of them as the line between creation and real life begins to blur and the actors are left with uncertainties...and a body count.
But did it really happen or was it all just a play?
- February 2011
"Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle: she died young." Intrigue, incest and murder – Webster’s iconic play centres around the lonely figure of the Duchess of Malfi, her court disintegrating under the web of spying and suspicion set up by her manipulative, deadly brothers. Our production will be set in 1930s Italy, gesturing towards an era of political instability and growing menace. We're also looking to work in some film elements, as well as playing on the hints of drug abuse, mental illness and illicit sexual desire in the play.
- February 2010
The Downing Dramatic Society is proud to present The Relapse by John Vanbrugh. First produced 1696, it is one of England’s most beloved Restoration comedies, featuring biting social satire that is still popular today. Vanbrugh contrasts fashionable London life with provincial sensibilities through a menagerie of outrageously comic characters including: reformed rogue husband Loveless, his virtuous wife Amanda, her ardent admirer Worthy, buxom widow Berinthia, peacock beau Lord Foppington, his profligate younger brother Tom Fashion, his perpetually plastered manservant Lory, their lecherous matchmaker Coupler, cantankerous country squire Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, his innocent yet up for it daughter Hoyden, her faithful governess Nurse and the buffoonish parson Bull.
To be presented in high period style, at the brand new luxurious Howard Theatre, this show is not to be missed.
