- June 2024
Athens and Sparta are at war, and the women decide they must put a stop to it. The answer? They must go on sex strike! (And also occupy the Athenian treasury thereby stopping Athens from buying more weapons.) A comedic imagining by Aristophanes of women doing politics, something inconceivable to the men of the play, Lysistrata is a wonderful and nuanced depiction of proto-feminism, filled to the brim with hilarious confrontations and interactions.
- February 2024
Reviews
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"You'll be kicking yourself if you don't watch it. It's courageous, outrageous, and unlike anything you'll ever watch" - Salma Salifu for The Tab
"This is not just a well-produced, well-directed, well-acted play, but one that has emotional power and is incredibly current" - Evan Grandidge de Paz for The Tab
https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2024/02/14/review-fairview-174714
"Chen and Bisiriyu have directed a revolutionary piece of art [...] It's productions like these [...] that can spur real tangible change" - Tirza Sey for The Cambridge Student https://www.thecambridgestudent.co.uk/culture/fairview-review-a-masterclass-into-the-power-of-observation
"Fairview changes what it means to watch theatre" - Alice Mainwood for Varsity https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/27095
About the show
I’ve been trying to talk to You.
This whole time.
Have you heard me?
The Frasier family is gearing up for Grandma's birthday, and Beverly needs this dinner to be perfect. But, the silverware's wrong, Jasmine is drinking, Dayton isn't helping, Keisha is being a typical teenager, and Tyrone might not show up at all. As Beverly's hostess neurosis begins to get the better of her while her family acts like a family, Keisha's adolescent malaise starts to seem like maybe it could be something else.
Hailed by critics as "astoundingly smart and riveting", "dazzling and ruthless", and "unforgettable", this Pulitzer-prize-winning play invites audiences to question and process the act of watching. What happens if you do?
- November 2023
In a newly urbanised, mechanised world - the ‘roaring twenties’ of Golden Age US - a young woman bears out the life prescribed for her. She works a job, until she marries her employer. She settles down, until she bears a child. She maintains a hollow marriage, until she meets another man. She conforms - until, like a loose cog in a machine, she shoots quickly down a wayward path.
Premiering in 1928, Sophie Treadwell’s play took inspiration from the life and death of Ruth Snyder. It reflected the Expressionist style popular in cinema and theatre at the time while anticipating the subtle, naturalistic dialogue of Beckett and Pinter. With its rote repetition, bleak characters and delicate construction of a hopeless, colourless world, Machinal is a harrowing gem of early feminist theatre - and a dark caution about the lengths one may go to in order to bring life into an empty existence.
- November 2023
“Sometimes I lie here looking at it - I dream in one instant Parliament bursts like a rotten fruit - spattering across the sky.”
It’s 1605 and James I, fresh from Scotland, is now King of England, a country fractured between Catholic and Protestant. A group of young religious fanatics from all corners of England, joined by mercenary Guido Fawkes, plot to strike at the heart of Government with a cellar full of gunpowder beneath Westminster.
This incendiary thriller weaves together the lives of kings and paupers, priests and spies, lovers and rivals in a heart-rending play of epic proportions, which interrogates how far would you go to defend your liberty?
- November 2023
Dripping with sarcasm, emotional tension, and uncertainty, Tusk Tusk powerfully explores the familial fractures within a seemingly innocuous London flat, where three children, eagerly awaiting a phone call, are playing hide and seek- in more ways than one.
Stenham’s second play, premiering at the Royal Court in 2009 and never before performed in Cambridge, powerfully explores the complexities, dysfunctionality and emotional entanglements of one family missing their mother. Boredom and playful sibling banter quickly transform into frightening emotional outbursts, violence, and a lingering sense that the lives of these children, “ricocheting between prematurely adult self-awareness and childlike neediness” (𝘝𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺), are irreparably disturbed. A twisted domestic drama with a shocking twist, Stenham’s play is one of loyalty, uncertainty, and familial fracturing.
- October 2023
Diagnosed as a child with a severe mental illness, Anna was heavily medicated on an abundance of pills. Now, as a young adult, she wonders what life would have been like without them. However, in her attempt to rediscover her interrupted passions, she threatens the delicate balance her mother has fought to maintain.
The Almighty Sometimes is a vivid and sensitive exploration of the reality of mental illness, for those who experience it firsthand, and for those who love them.
- June 2023
‘Our wooing doth not end like an old play;
Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.’
King Ferdinand and his friends - Dumaine, Longaville, and Berowne - have made a pact: to study rigorously and avoid the company of women for three years. But their vow is challenged by the arrival of the Princess of France and her ladies-in-waiting, whose presence sparks the beginnings of love. But will the young lovers’ romances endure against all odds? ‘Shakespeare’s most intellectual comedy’ is reimagined against the backdrop of a summer holiday in France, a witty and poignant look at the passionate yet fleeting nature of a summer romance.
- May 2023
One Man...Two Guvnors... and an evening full of joy and laughter.
Based on Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, One Man, Two Guvnors still remains one of the nation's most loved comedies of this century. When Francis Henshall finds himself employed by two guvnors, one a gangster in disguise, the other an upper-class lover, we see comedy chaos like no other!
- February 2023
Newly married, Hedda and Tesman start to settle into their new house, new relationship, new life. But Hedda soon finds herself bored, and trapped, while her husband is haunted by the figures of his past.
Hedda Gabler is Henrik Ibsen’s attempt to present the complexity of human nature, as Hedda struggles with ideas of ambition, love, lust, and sexuality, reimagined in a modern dystopian world.
- February 2023
The Queen is dead. Long live the King.
After a lifetime in waiting, King Charles III ascends to the throne. Endowed with a future of power and a drive for democracy, how will he rule? How will he be remembered? And how will the country react?
A Shakespearean history play for the modern age, ‘King Charles III’ examines our media, our politics, and - of course - our monarchy.
- 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!”
- November 2022
On a beautiful St. George's day, Johnny 'Rooster' Byron is a wanted man. To some, he is a rustic pied piper, a demagogue of the woods, a powerful legend among men; but to most of the townsfolk, he is a drunkard who disturbs the peace and needs to be evicted from the land. However, Rooster has more to worry about: his son wants to be taken to the fair, a father wants to give him a serious kicking, and a motley crew of mates want his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.
After its success in the West End, The Financial Times called it "a wonderful, rollicking, dark comedy about contemporary life in rural England."
- November 2022
Every man has a star… the star of one’s honesty.
A tree has blown down in the night. It’s Larry Keller's tree; the tree that his mother planted in his memory after he disappeared three years ago. It’s 1946: the War is over, but its memory – the inter-personal ruptures it has caused – continues to intrude on the Keller family’s life. Kate Keller, Larry’s mother, refuses to accept that he might be dead; Chris, his brother, scarred by the war and now in a relationship with Larry’s ex-girlfriend, Ann Deever, encourages his family to move on. But when it transpires that Joe Keller, the play’s patriarch, was complicit in the manufacturing of faulty aeroplane parts — parts which could have been a cause of Larry’s death — the foundations of the Keller family are shaken to their core. Unresolvable questions about guilt and responsibility, youth and ageing, materialism and selflessness all vibrate in Arthur Miller’s brilliantly crafted meditation on the shadowy underbelly of the American Dream.
- October 2022
‘I will be remembered! I will be remembered! - if not in fame, in infamy…’
Respected composer Antonio Salieri’s unflinching devotion to God comes to an end when he meets a new rival by the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. How can a man so trivial, so infantile, so obscene, be blessed with divine talent? Transformed by envy and hatred, Salieri dedicates his life to ruining Mozart's.
Accompanied by a live orchestra onstage, Peter Shaffer’s hard-hitting masterpiece dives into the gravest and most thrilling consequences of greatness, love, and the fear of mediocrity.
- June 2022
In a hilarious subversion of a romantic comedy, How to Date a Feminist turns a traditional straight relationship on its head by playing with ideas of feminism and gender roles. This incredibly self aware production uses stereotypes and cinematic tropes to bring a traditional rom-com storyline into the 21st century, weaving in some classic family drama for good measure. Kate and Steve are caught between their parents’ expectations, supposedly ‘perfect’ partners and their own predisposed (and gendered) understanding of what a relationship should be.
- June 2022
‘I have had a dream. Past the wit of man to say what dream it was.’
Two pairs of lovers ( ... and a rowdy set of tradesmen-cum-actors) leave the Athenian court for the forest, just as the marriage between Hippolyta, the warrior princess, and Theseus takes place. What follows is nothing short of mania: fairy magic, romantic rivalry, mischievous sprites, and a pantomime rom-com to top it all off. This is the English countryside, but not as you know it …
Join us for this open air adaptation of Shakespeare’s woodland comedy, complete with a live band and original score, and set in the beautiful gardens of Robinson College.
- May 2022
Desperate to discover the secrets of their business before they get #cancelled, the board of “Pear Music” dive deep into every aspect of their business with the help of “Consultancy Man”. Together they investigate hilarious investments ranging from “Drum and Bassless Conspiracy Theories” to a tragic pair of Sony Headphones.
- May 2022
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly was a glorified story about an American navy boy in Japan, failing his oriental love for his soon-to-be wife, Butterfly.
In an alternative universe of 1960s China, amidst the rise of the cultural revolution, Rene Gallimard, a French diplomat newly tasked with high-profile intelligence, falls in love with a mystical Beijing Opera singer, Song Liling, in his attempts to escape the expatriate circles. Restraining physical contact, Song cites Confucian modesty, but Rene is dissatisfied — he must create his fantasies — of Song, of the Orient, and even of his motherland, France, to live through the next two decades.
Welfare form: https://forms.gle/pwr3iBmbom1Rrk8a6
- May 2022
"I'm telling you. I don't understand what is happening to me."
Just a couple of years ago, Nicolas was a smiling, happy boy. But now, nearly 18 and struggling with his parent's divorce he's the opposite: listless, skipping classes, and lying. He hopes moving in with his father will help; a new school and a chance for a fresh start. But he feels unwanted with his father's new wife and decides that returning to his mother's may be the answer. What happens when the options run out?
Florian Zeller's The Son is a touching portrayal of teenage depression and the effect it has on those around. It doesn't offer solutions but is sure to provoke conversations.
- February 2022
What does it mean to trust yourself and those around you?
Arel is a powerful sorcerer gifted with the magic of the forest. When sent away from her home for her own safety, she is met by a party of outcasts - a wizard, a rogue, a bard and a healer - seeking to take down a tyrannous force in the community. As each member of the party grapples with their own identity and place in the world, Arel learns that the life she always longed for may have never even existed.
Splinters is a fantasy musical inspired by the stories and lives we pretend to live that make us feel like we belong. It is my love letter to the roleplaying fantasy game dungeons & dragons and all the magic that goes along with it.
ID: The show poster. The title 'Splinters' is written in green capital letters at the top. The 'T' is a branch of a tree. Below the title is a line drawing of trees shaded in different greens. Dotted around are mushrooms, a d4, a d12 and a gem, and on some of the trees there are images of alchemical symbols. Below the image is the text 'A Fantasy Musical by Katrina Rose', the Brickhouse logo and the dates and times of the show. Poster designed by Ayesha Murphy Jallali
- February 2022
Leontes, the crazed ringmaster, succumbs to a deluded idea that his wife, Hermione is having an affair. Their infant daughter is banished to the land of Bohemia where she is adopted by a Shepherd and his son a clown. In this vibrant and dangerous world, we see an exploration of new and exciting experiences through curious movement within the world of the circus.
- February 2022
“It is easy, describe what haunts you. Frankenstein, you have thought of a story. Mary Shelley, you have seized the spark of life. Now write this.”
1816, Switzerland. Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Claire Clairmont vacation together. A challenge is made: who can write the most horrific story? As past and present intertwine, friendships fade and die, and a mysterious voice haunts the room, Mary Shelley reflects on the circumstances that led to her greatest work - Frankenstein.
- February 2022
"I have to form myself, and to try to help you to form, some sort of reasoned estimate of the most romantic figure in the recent history of mathematics." —G. H. Hardy on S. Ramanujan, 1936
In 1913, a young, self-taught mathematical genius in India named Srinivasa Ramanujan is invited to Cambridge to work with G. H. Hardy, a professor at Trinity college and established mathematician. Over the next five years, they worked together to produce hundreds of important results, and Ramanujan is today heralded as the greatest Indian mathematician of all time. However, their partnership is threatened by Ramanujan’s failing health as well as the two men’s vastly different cultural and religious backgrounds. At the same time, shadows of the first world war looms over the world.
Partition is a deftly imagined, multileveled drama on faith, mathematics and a tentative friendship between two of the greatest minds in scientific history.
- November 2021
"Cause people can surprise you... or not"
Brickhouse Theatre Company presents Dogfight, a story of war, love, and personal growth, as a marine learns the power of compassion when he plays a cruel joke on an idealistic waitress.
Set in the swinging 60s, in San Francisco, and featuring a score by Tony Award winners Pasek & Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, The Greatest Showman), the genuine heart of this show is sure to have you wanting more.
This amateur production is presented by arrangement with Music Theatre International
All authorised performance materials are also supplied by MTI www.mtishows.co.uk
- November 2021
- June 2021
A wealthy merchant by the name of Jenrick retires, thinking he's settling into a life of relative peace and composure. Philosophic rest, you might call it. But his long unrequited love, his disgruntled business partner and his plotting servants don't quite have the same thing on their minds.
A lot of plotting and hijinks ensue, and it seems that not one of these schemers is going to get much rest, unless it's an eternal one.
- May 2021
Join three hapless criminals as they attempt the heist of their lives: stealing the Crown Jewels. Watch as they assemble their team, plot their path, and even fall in love on the way. Will they swagger off with the swag, or be swept up in the long arms of the law? Either way, irresistible tunes and uproarious comedy guarantee a criminally good time.
- April 2021
Brickhouse Theatre Company is the resident theatre company at Robinson College! Under usual circumstances, we usually hold at least 5+ productions in Robinson's indoor and outdoor theatres, while funding other shows across Cambridge!
Due to the pandemic, we are going online and hosting a virtual Open Mic Night at the end of the Easter vacation/start of Easter term! We are open to any type of act: from a comedy sketch, a musical theatre song, a monologue from your favourite play, stand-up, poetry, original writing, a dance, or anything else! Whatever you would like to do (roughly in the range of 2-5 minutes), we would love to hear about it by 5th April!
- November 2020
N.B. this show has been cancelled
Join three hapless criminals as they attempt the heist of their lives: stealing the Crown Jewels. Watch as they assemble their team, plot their path, and even fall in love on the way. Will they swagger off with the swag, or be swept up in the long arms of the law? Either way, irresistible tunes and uproarious comedy guarantee a criminally good time.
- October 2020
William Shakespeare's Macbeth
- February 2020
"Those Left Behind" follows the McBride family as they cope with life after the death of Mark - the father of the family.
Mother Karen and daughter Heather discover that life doesn't stop for mourning and that everyday battles become infinitely harder in the face of loss. Meanwhile, son Joe finds a whole new side to his dad in the form of old and unfinished sheet music.
This musical has been based off a series of true anecdotes, and attempts to show the importance of support systems and family in the face of loss.
- February 2020
Philadelphia, Here I Come! centres around Gareth (Gar) O'Donnell's move to America, specifically Philadelphia. The play takes place on the night before and morning of Gar's departure to America. Gar is portrayed by two characters, Gar Public ("the Gar that people see, talk to, talk about") and Gar Private ("the unseen man, the man within, the conscience"). Gareth lives with his father, S. B. O'Donnell ("a responsible, respectable citizen") with whom he has never connected. Gar works for his father in his shop and their relationship is no different from that of Boss and Employee. Private makes fun of S.B. calling him "Screwballs" and parodying his nightly routine as a fashion show.
- February 2020
ADC Lateshow Week 3
Cambridge's comedy scene asks the question we're all dying to know the answer to: "What's wrong with me?" Join us as doctors (or at least comedians playing doctors) try to diagnose the ills of the world and provide the best medicine of all, laughter, in large doses that push the legal limit.
- January–February 2020
"In fact, this is my soul leaking over the floor here, soot itself. I'm going to scoop handfuls up and spread it over you. Your head, you see, was the match head to this."
In a neglected Northern town, desperately missing her dead father, Little Voice spends her time locked in her bedroom, listening to his old record collection.
Meanwhile, downstairs, her mother Mari is on the rampage-she’s after booze, a man, a greasy breakfast, and a working phoneline.
Away from the chaos, Little Voice learns to perfect astonishing impersonations of famous divas including Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland.
When Mari starts dating small-time club agent Ray Say, she thinks he's her last chance for a better life. When Ray Say hears Little Voice sing, he thinks she's his ticket to the big time.
Little Voice just wants a normal life and to be loved.
Not everyone is going to get what they want.
Funny, brutal, beautiful and sad, Jim Cartwright’s timeless and ultimately uplifting tale is a comic tragedy about finding your voice in a noisy world.
- November 2019
"But you've asked a simple question, and I've told you why. It wasn't on a dare or on a whim. It's hard to comprehend now that the reason why, was simply that I went along with him."
Relationships can be murder. In 1924, two wealthy Chicago University students abducted and murdered a young boy for no reason other than wanting to carry out ‘the perfect crime’. Thirty-four years later, the true motives were revealed. Stephen Dolginoff’s one-act musical brings real-life thrill killers and homosexual lovers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb to centre stage. It focuses on their dysfunctional romantic relationship, and how it eventually led to their imprisonment for ‘the crime of the century’. With a fast-paced narrative and captivating score, Thrill Me tells a story of obsession, sex and misguided philosophy.
- November 2019
Newly set in 2019, Funny Girl follows the story of Fanny Brice, talented and irrepressible but incapable of succeeding as a woman in traditional showbiz because she doesn't fit the mould of the all-American beauty queen. The show charts her meteoric rise through comedy instead and her turbulent marriage to Nicky, who struggles to cope with his wife's successes. Featuring such hit songs as "People", "The Music that Makes Me Dance" and of course "Don't Rain on my Parade", Funny Girl is not to be missed!
