- August 2022
Real, Mad World is a brilliant piece of new writing following the joys, heartbreaks and absurdities of trans life. Laura, transgender woman and playwright, wants to be a mother more than anything. Faced by the children that she cannot bear, she writes herself into another life with a womb, cisgender husband and kids. But Lindsay, Laura’s partner, is waiting at home with a glass of wine and plans for Trans Revolution Now.
Selected as the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club 2022 Fringe Play, Real, Mad World is a funny and tender study of how we treat the people we love.
- August 2022
Jewish teenagers Esty, Allister, Danny and Sara are sitting in a revision session about to take their GCSEs when the terrorist alarm rings. And this time it might not be a drill. Trapped in their RS classroom they have all the time in the world to think. Flipping back and forth between their different perspectives, in the past and present day, they must decide, if they come out the other end, what they will do differently, what risks they will take and most importantly what lines they are willing to cross. Set in Manchester 2016 during the rise in antisemitism, Life Before The Line is a deep insight into what it means to grow up during politically charged times. Selected as the CUADC Edinburgh Fringe 2022 play. Praise for "Life Before the Line":
“If I could give this a score above 5 – it is more than well-deserved – I would, but I suppose I’d have to settle on a 5/5 this time. An unmissable performance and a truly spectacular show. I cannot recommend getting a ticket to this enough.” - The Tab ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“The conversations were so engaging that my eyes were glued to the stage, and the pairing of Lever’s script and Ben Phillips’ minimalistic direction was completely harmonious” - Varsity ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2
Praise for Fringe Run:
"Top Tier Fringe material" - Jake Mace, Binge Fringe Magazine, Editor and Chief ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"A revelation... I feel I am a better person for seeing it"- Richard Stamp, Fringe Guru, The Wee Review
"Strong and heartfelt... Keep an eye out for Lever's name in the future" - Edfringe review ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- June 2022
Gather around and I’ll tell you a tale!
Oral storytelling is a universal part of human culture and is one of our most ancient artforms. There’s a certain magic in being transported away by spoken word, whether into a familiar tale or a new one.
The ADC is hosting a relaxed evening of storytelling. Come and hear original stories and retellings of traditional tales from students in a cosy setting.
- May 2022
We love and we hate, we lust and we mourn. And in the face of these immensities, do you still care? Do you still want what you want? Time can't stop us, death can't stop us, war can't stop us! The power of Vanity Fair!
Amelia is kind and gentle. Becky is ambitious and rebellious. Amelia longs for love. Becky wants wealth and popularity. Despite all their differences, when both women are swept up by the tides of romance, money, gossip, power, war, and death, they quickly discover that their fortunes can fall just as swiftly as they rise. In the world of Vanity Fair, only one thing is certain: that nothing is certain.
- May 2022
The origin story of the Pied Piper - the classic folklore as a Mime. The Pied piper was once a troubled child. Their mischievous nature got them attention they didn’t want. In adulthood, the piper is now famous for their tunes. The piper learns about the issues at Hamelin and decides to pay a visit. The mayor at Hamelin explains the problem and promises a reward. The piper accepts and they lure the rats. The mayor decides to not pay the piper. The piper swears revenge. Will their plan work out? Happily ever after or never after?
Mime is finally here at Cambridge. Come experience the extravagance and magic this form of silent comedy brings to a dark tale.
- March 2022
Singin’ in the Rain brings you the classic, golden-age movie musical adapted for the stage, featuring some of the best-loved comedy routines, toe-tapping dance numbers, and classic musical theatre songs: “Good Mornin’”, “Make ‘em Laugh”, “Broadway Melody”, and the show-stopping title number “Singin’ in the Rain”. The show captures the Hollywood movie transition from silent pictures to the new ‘talkies’, following film co-stars Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont. When Monumental Studios turns silent ‘The Dueling Cavalier’ into an all-singing, all-dancing ‘The Dancing Cavalier’, they are faced with a problem – Lina’s shrill and squeaky voice which might just end her career. As Kathy Selden, an aspiring actress, steps in to save the studio, she begins to fall in love, leaving Don Lockwood with difficult decisions both on and off screen. Pouring with laughs, charm, romance, and wit, expect high-energy dance routines and classic songs from the movie, added with its spectacular stage effects for this year’s Lent Term Musical!
- March 2022
‘SWIM’ is the winning script of Cambridge Creatives x CUADC’s scriptwriting competition. When Cass is sent by her Dad to visit her older sister, Thea, at university, in the hope that this will help her out of a tough time, they struggle to get along. This short film focuses on an emotionally precarious relationship between sisters and how, in just over 24 hours together, they learn to be in each other’s company again.
- March 2022
Multi award winning play Moderation tells the story of two ex-social media moderators who meet again years after quitting their job when one decides to sue the company that exposed them to the traumatic material which left both with different psychological scars. For one of them, who has become unable to touch the ground, the prospect of digging up the past has little appeal. For the other, whose drinking led to a head injury that has damaged their ability to remember things, reconstructing what happened seems like the only way to heal. Based on real accounts, Moderation reveals the true impact of watching the worst things on the internet for a living.
The play won this year’s CUADC Playwriting Competition, winning £200 and a run in the Larkum Studio. It was also co-winner of this year’s Cambridge Creatives Playwriting Competition, which was judged by industry professionals Sally Abbott, Luke Barnes, and Alexis Zegerman.
- January 2022
Jewish teenagers Esty, Allister, Danny and Sara are sitting in a revision session about to take their GCSEs when the terrorist alarm rings. And this time it might not be a drill. Trapped in their RS classroom they have all the time in the world to think. Flipping back and forth between their different perspectives, in the past and present day, they must decide, if they come out the other end, what they will do differently, what risks they will take and most importantly what lines they are willing to cross. Set in Manchester 2016 during the rise in antisemitism, Life Before the Line is a deep insight into what it means to grow up during politically charged times.
- November–December 2021
Welcome to Rapunzel! In a land where art has been banned and all the Dames have been banished, can this kingdom be brought back to life?
In a dastardly plan to keep them away from his crown, the evil King sends his nephew and niece, Prince Victor and Princess Stella, on a quest to save Rapunzel from her dragon-guarded tower in the hopes that they perish. Along the way they instead encounter adventure, hilarity, and friendship. Join Victor and Stella on their way to save Rapunzel and, ultimately, the entire kingdom.
Rapunzel brings live pantomimes back with a queer and colourful bang. A celebration of individuality and self-love, Rapunzel is not to be missed.
- November 2021
- November 2021
This November, the ADC Theatre’s Freshers Mainshow is Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘A Small Family Business', taking you to the 1980s where Jack McCracken, a man of principle in a corrupt world, gets the chance of a lifetime - to take over his family’s furniture business. There’s just one problem: he’s just found out his family is, how do you put it… criminally gifted. After being approached by a private detective armed with revealing information, the morally straight Jack must figure out how he and his corrupt family can survive. The tangled world of Jack and his family of thieves and cheats guarantees to make you both hold your breath and burst out laughing.
Everyone involved in this production is new to Cambridge theatre, so this promises to be an exciting show for all who are keen to show their support for the next generation of Cambridge thespians. ‘A Small Family Business’ promises to be a big week in Cambridge theatre!
- November 2021
- October 2021
Moses and Kitch stand around on the corner – talking shit, passing the time, and hoping that maybe today will be different. As they dream of their promised land, a stranger wanders into their space with his own agenda and derails their plans.
Emotional and lyrical, Pass Over crafts everyday profanities into poetic and humorous riffs, exposing the unquestionable human spirit of young men stuck in a cycle that they are desperately trying to escape.
- October 2021
Am I the devil? ...You don’t need be the devil, I been hurt by men.
Set against the backdrop of a 17th-century witch hunt, Vinegar Tom depicts the lives of women on the fringes of society. Alice sleeps with a mysterious man. Joan throws curses at her enemies with her old tomcat by her side. Susan is burdened with an unwanted pregnancy. As these women’s lives intertwine, they find themselves subject to all the horrors of hysteria, superstition, and patriarchy as they are pressured to confess - are they a witch?
- August 2021
N.B. this show has been cancelled
Locked away in Baghdad Mosque is a beautifully intricate Quran, complete with 6,000 verses of elaborate calligraphy and 600 pages of decorative motifs – a marvel in artistry that would surely be celebrated by Muslims and artists around the world if it were not written in Saddam Hussein’s blood. Now its artist lives in the US, where he restores old paintings for a living, but in every step, he’s still followed by the walking, talking, blood-drenched Quran that has haunted him since.
- June 2021
-Do you think this is the year we become real playwrights?
-We haven't had an audience larger than the cast since 1587, and that was back when we were doing erotic puppet shows in Saffron Walden.
Tom and Rob languish in a bedsit situated somewhere between 1590s Deptford and undergraduate accommodation built in the 60s. They're greasy, cold, and fancy themselves writers; Rob drinks too much and Tom is bad.
‘The Parnassus Players’ is an original student-written comedy, set within a fusion of the 21st century student theater scene and the theatrical world of 1590s London. It follows two budding writers, Rob and Tom, in their struggle to navigate the scrappy underworld of Shakespeare's London and attain literary stardom.
Join these vagrants for an innovative satire and celebration of live theater! We're talking queer Elizabethan romance, goofs, gaffs, the Phantom of the Opera, and more bawdy puns than you can shake a pickled herring at!
- May 2021
CW: Sexual Assault
The Passion is a new piece of student writing about sexual assault and relationships. Set in a student flat in Cambridge, the play follows the reconciliation of Dan and Tony, a former university couple, over a single afternoon during Freshers Week. However, when it is revealed that Dan’s motives concern an incident which occurred during their relationship, the afternoon soon becomes a heated discussion about memories, self-deception, and the realities of assault. The Passion is a story about the things that go unsaid in a relationship, and the implications we make of other people. It features a cast of two, and is comprised of three acts.
- May 2021
Fleeing a world he has rejected, Robin finds solace in his music and the sanctuary of his remote family home. But as his kingdom begins to crumble around him, how far will he go to save it and at what cost?
Polly Stenham drags us far into the depths of Robin's mind, unearthing dark family secrets on the way. As the extent of his suffering is slowly revealed and his sanity is called into question, Robin plummets into a spiral of self destruction as he fights to keep his world from falling apart....
- March 2021
Sleeping Beauty is rudely awoken from her slumber. Marry Prince Charming?! Thanks but no thanks - a better adventure is calling.
Join our hero as you've never seen her before as she enters the world of work under evil bosses, Jake and Will Grimm, and on her very first shift must undertake a dangerous mission to find an escaped Panto Horse and save her colleagues' jobs. She sets off journeying through a series of absurd pantomimes in pursuit of the horse, only to discover that everything is not as it seems...
Sleeping Beauty and her friends must work together, find the horse and ship the baddies off - next day delivery.
- February 2021
It’s 1935. Alma Martyr, a lovable English professor, and her secret gardener fiancé Castor are preparing for a romantic weekend getaway at her parents' woodland cabin. However, a mix-up with dates leads to four of her best students joining them for the weekend. There’s sweetly innocent Daphne, pompously cruel Leopold and laughably keen Lance and Laurie. Unwise preconceptions and misunderstandings abound – unrequited love and mutual hatred leading to such entanglements! Carnage ensues, as rivalries among the students and complex love affairs lead to games, disputes and a dramatic conclusion...
- December 2020
The sequel has arrived. Are you ready to enter the void?
The spiritual successor to Lacuna Ridge is finally here. We left the show wondering if X went home. She did - but she’s still trapped in the realm. Join us for another fantastical adventure with X as she goes on the most dangerous journey of her life. Are you ready to enter the Void?
- December 2020
Ella Hickson’s ‘Eight’ explores a generation defined by apathy, and what it takes to feel.
Danny sleeps next to corpses, Millie bonks for king and country, and Miles thanks a terrorist for his new life. This series of monologues carefully sketches a cast that is alternatingly repulsive and fascinating.
- November 2020
“We’re doing what so many people told us we were incapable of doing: holding our leaders accountable for their disastrous and dangerous actions.”
In 2015 a landmark lawsuit asserted the US government had knowingly infringed upon the rights to life and liberty by encouraging activities which cause climate change. Those who brought this case: 21 young people aged eight to nineteen. Suffering from displacement, drought, famines, wildfires, many felt forced to drop out of school for fear of their future. Now struggling with the pressures of holding hope, they continue to fight. This is their story, told in their words. It is a story of bitterness and terror, but also triumph and love, for each other and our home.
- November 2020
N.B. this show has been cancelled
- November 2020
He's back!
- October 2020
A student-run theatre.
Dressing Room 1.
Opening night.
15 minutes to curtains up.
And one of the actors is missing.
What has happened to her?
Why is the shower door closed?
Why is everyone so concerned about who's in the audience?
And what's so significant about this 'Hangman Sketch'............
- August 2020
“The Czech state may call the tune, but its musicians just won’t play along.”
In 80s Communist Prague, nothing is more dangerous than jazz. Struggling against threats of censorship and imprisonment, a small group of musicians band together to create ‘The ‘Jazz Section’, an act of rebellion with fatal consequences. This dynamic gig-theatre show focuses on the resilience of musicianship and how sometimes real art can make a stronger statement than any political party.
- April–May 2020
There must have been a moment, at the beginning where we could have said ‘no’
But somehow we missed it
Two friends wake up with no memory. They are swept up in the events of someone else’s tragedy and left to suffer their own - alone. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
This imaginative new production of Stoppard’s first play examines how it feels to be cut adrift. Afraid and alone, the pair are trapped in the spotlight. Yet their fate is written and creeps closer and closer...
- March 2020
Hailed as the perfect musical comedy, Guys and Dolls transports us to 1950’s New York, a world of gamblers, gangsters and nightclub singers, and missionaries. A tale about finding love in all the wrong places, it follows Nathan Detroit as he tries to find the cash to set up the biggest crap game in town, all the while with the authorities breathing down his neck; meanwhile, his girlfriend, Adelaide, laments their long-standing engagement. To secure the funds for the location, Nathan bets Sky, a high-rolling gambler, that he can’t take the “doll” of Nathan’s choosing to Havana; and chooses straight-talking and straight-laced Evangelist Sergeant Sarah Brown. In the ensuing chaos, Guys And Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.
- February 2020
Bernard, Neville, Louis, Jinny, Rhoda and Susan are childhood friends. Bound by their mutual love and hate, their lives remain interwoven from their shared school days and despite their divergent paths through adulthood. The Waves follows these six individual but irrevocably connected souls as they navigate their various experiences, their communal griefs, and their relationships to one another and the world around them.
The novel that Virginia Woolf called her 'play-poem' comes to the Cambridge stage for the first time, in a new adaptation which celebrates multimedia and physical theatre.
Now with a pre-show panel discussion featuring Professor Dame Gillian Beer, Dr Trudi Tate, and members of the production team on Friday 28th February.
- November–December 2019
It’s not easy being Red. Growing up on the edge of the woods, with only her mum for company, Red wants more from life.
As she runs into the forest in search of answers, Red encounters a world beyond her wildest imagination. On her journey, she is reunited with her estranged father, Robin, and gets a taste of a new life. But when he’s not quite what she bargained for, Red must find her way through a forest full of magic, danger and Big Bad villains. Join Red on an epic adventure, as she grows up and begins to learn the value of family.
- October 2019
“You need a name that expresses a Christian faith - Mary- mother of Jesus - is the most blessed name - but I just named another girl that this afternoon, ahh, there is Ruth - but I hate names of monosyllables so - ESTER! Yes, that is it, that is your name. Ester, she was a woman of great, great courage, saved her people in fact, second only to the Virgin Mary in Holy women in my opinion. And you look like one - indeed you do, you do.”
It’s 1896 in Rhodesia and Jekesai has just been given her new, Catholic name. Chilford, the only black Roman Catholic teacher in the region, has decided she’ll now be known as Ester, wear European clothing and speak only in English. She’s torn away from everything that she knows by her fellow African who earnestly believes the promises of the White man.
- August 2019
Harry and Ella walk into a bar. They’ve been together a year now. It’s going well.
Until suddenly – after a not-so-quick trip to the Ladies – it’s not.
Join us in this intimate venue and watch the drama unfold in real time, first from the corridor outside, and then from within THE most glamorous, the most mysterious, the most sacred of all locations: the ladies’ loos. During Act 1, lament the many impediments of being male – waiting for your girlfriend (seriously, how long does it take to put a tampon in?), neglected, powerless, and, as always, excluded from the action. During Act 2, see what you were missing – revel in the glory of being female, of being welcomed into this chapel of piss, poo and periods, where the gossip and the drama flows as readily as the sickly pink soap from the silver dispensers. And most importantly, find out what happened behind cubicle doors to rock this Perfect Couple.
New endings and old beginnings, frustration and embarrassment, humour and tenderness – this play examines the walls we build around gender and sexuality, and the struggles of navigating a queer new world when those walls unexpectedly come down.
‘The Ladies is one of the best pieces of theatre I have seen during my time here: it is funny and witty, it is utterly sensitive and articulate, and the sheer complexity and nuance of growing up that Tyrrell is able to so aptly cram in is staggering. I love, love, love it.’ – TCS, 5 stars
‘To have written something so nuanced and cleverly-crafted, with its layers of meaning running from the first to the last second, is such an exciting achievement...’ – Varsity, 4.5 stars
‘While the play exhibits a deep sense of sensitivity and awareness, its sardonic wit caused audience reactions that ranged from smirking to irrepressible hysterics.’ – The Tab, 4.5 stars
- June 2019
'I’m walking down the street and there’s a door in the fence open and inside there are three women I’ve seen before.'
Three old friends and a neighbour. A summer of afternoons in the back yard. Tea and catastrophe.
From award-winning playwright Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone combines neighbourly chit-chat with visions of apocalyptic horror. Providing a uniquely female version of the Armageddon, four seemingly normal women sit down for a chat over tea over several summer afternoons; but what emerges about each of their pasts, as well as what lies in store for them, could never be expected.
- May 2019
“The plague bacillus never actually dies. It never disappears - not entirely”. From Camus’ novel, in an unnamed city, it has reared its head and sent forth its rats. The screaming becomes normal, the gates are locked, families and lovers have been cut off; now all there is to do is identify, diagnose, condemn and file. Faced with inevitable doom, humanity chooses to fight or resign, asking what we all want to - ‘can there be hope without meaning?’.
We bear witness to the retrospective inquiry into these events. Our protagonist, Dr Rieux, is torn between the personal and the official, bureaucracy ultimately hindering the inquiry and his healing. Camus’ original may have been a response to Nazi invasion, but now this electrifying adaptation makes it applicable to our personal and societal descent into chaos.
“What it is that you learn when you live through a time of plague… there is more to admire about people than to despise or despair of”.
