- March 2017
“You stepped over the line.”
Shy, awkward, gentle Adam meets experienced, analytical Evelyn. Together they embark on an intense relationship which sees Adam go to extraordinary lengths to improve his appearance and character. Under Evelyn’s subtle and insistent coaching, we witness the gradual reconstruction of Adam’s fundamental moral character. At every step, we wonder how far Adam will go to prove his love for Evelyn, how far he is willing to stray from himself and his friends to mould himself into an ideal shape. Meanwhile, his best friends’ engagement crumbles. ‘The Shape of Things’ forces us to ask ourselves; how much of yourself would you change for love? How far would you go for your art? And is there a line between the two that cannot be crossed? Love. Art. Manipulation. ‘The Shape of Things’ brings all three together and asks where the boundaries between them lie.
- February–March 2017
The fens, east of Cambridge, have been underwater, drained, and reclaimed. They say its earth is so fertile that if you scoop up a handful you’ll grow three fingers before you throw it down again. Real people make their lives here, but the wild is always close at hand. The stories passed around are of daughters, fathers, lovers, foxes, twins, women, fishers, men.
Fen is a new devised piece based on stories by Daisy Johnson, created in the eery landscapes and dingy rehearsal rooms of Cambridge. It incorporates nature and technology into an immersive, uncanny exploration of the indelible marks a landscape can leave on its people.
- February 2017
https://vimeo.com/202564794
'I haven’t seen you in years, I don’t even know who you are any more but, fuck, yes I’m here for you, Ray, and I put that in writing we go through a whole procedure and you don’t… appear to give a shit.'
Ray has been discharged from mental hospital. The play charts his attempt to rejoin the wider world, under the care of his sister, who, busy running a restaurant and short on sympathy, can’t stop her brother from drifting into old habits, especially not when his best friend is a drunken old man prone to apocalyptic rages. Relationships grow, patience shortens and long-silenced voices start talking again as Ray and his new life hurtle towards breaking point.
“The most thrilling playwriting debut in years ... The writing is razor-sharp, sensitive, quietly eloquent, full of the touchingly drab poetry of lost lives.” - Sunday Times
- January–February 2017
"During the eight years of our mourning, not even the wind from the street shall enter this house!"
Andalusia, 1936.
In the wake of her husband's death, tyrannical matriarch Bernarda imposes eight years of mourning upon her five adult daughters: for eight years, they are not to leave the family home.
But Bernarda's blinkered puritanism cannot account for the desires of her daughters, and soon unrest begins to swell in the house as each seeks to assert a sense of self and their own place in the world.
Interpreted by an entirely female cast, this is a tale of generations at odds with one another, of the assertion of identity above conformity and of the drive to be human.
Often grouped together with The Blood Wedding and Yerma as a “rural trilogy”, The House of Bernarda Alba is Garcia Lorca’s final and greatest work. He was shot by the fascist authorities of Granada two months after it was completed.
- November 2016
Teams of writers, directors and actors must write, rehearse and put on plays on a theme in the space of just 24 hours. This is theatrical collaboration on a scale not seen anywhere else, pushing the whole team to the limit and creating unforgettable performances.
- November 2016
Welcome to the sleepy alpine village of Alpenberg; there’s beer, snow, semi-constructed gold castles, and the Christmas tree market is in full swing.
But when a careless offhand comment by the local landlord gets his daughter into trouble, it sparks a chain of events that resurrects Alpenberg’s darkest secret.
Meet our heroine Frieda, our lumberjacking Dame, and mad King Bruno for a snow-capped, gold-plated, schnitzel-covered tale of revenge, greed and love.
Cambridge’s finest offering of comedians, actors, technicians and musical talents present this year’s CUADC/Footlights Pantomime 2016: Rumpelstiltskin.
Come down to the ADC this Christmas and join us for a bit of rumpy pumpy.
- November 2016
Seven friends in their twilight years share a vast bed. Through an exhilarating sequence of abstracted monologues, expressive movement and spectacle, they dream, remember and reflect together on a long past. Acclaimed at the Royal National Theatre, Jim Cartwright’s Bed is a surreal exploration of life and dreams, of old age and death, an “odd, harrowing and hilarious piece, entirely without sentimentality, sturdy but moving”.
- November 2016
Everyone creates their own coping strategies or rules for living. But what happens when an extended family gathers in the kitchen for a traditional Christmas and they each follow those rules, rigidly?
In Sam Holcroft's theatrically playful dark comedy a family does just that. And when the instructions are there for all to see, audience included, there's really no place to hide. As long-held mechanisms for survival are laid bare, even Mum, who's been preparing this lunch since last January, becomes embroiled. Long-held rivalries and resentments will out.
Accusations fly, relationships deconstruct, the rules take over.
- November 2016
"A job is a wage and a wage is a cage in a town like mine."
Carl doesn't fit in at home. He doesn’t fit in anywhere. When he signs up for the army, he sees it as a chance to escape the grim reality of life in his hometown. But the army takes him to Afghanistan. And when he comes home, it’s not as a war hero but as a changed man. Winner of a 2011 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Britannia Waves the Rules is an arresting look at conflict and its effect on soldiers returning home to a world they no longer know how to cope with, and a society that doesn’t know how to cope with them.
- November 2016
“I used to think I could just replant myself – that exile was a new garden in which to grow. But now my roots are rotting. I’ll stop being a tree and turn into sand.”
Six women meet in exile. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know when, or who, or why. Stuck in this place of placelessness, enclosed and without borders, they search in the sand for memories of home as their identity slips through their fingers. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Medea feels entitled to the last drop. Antoinette is trapped in the attic. Agave is haunted by the image of her son’s severed head. Samasti just got her period. Abhita thinks this is a joke. And Elaheh wants to write down the desert. As tensions run high and the water runs out, the women are forced to unearth their stories.
- October 2016
“Show Political Restraint”
We invite you to come and traverse the turbulent history of early twentieth-century China in the first ever English performance of China's most famous play.
Teahouse is the revolutionary tale of the Chinese revolution: the fall of a dynasty, the establishment of the republic, and bloody civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists.
Follow history as told from within the iconic Beijing 'Yu Tai' teahouse between 1898 and 1948 as it struggles to survive in turbulent times. In its lifetime China transforms: it is a dying Qing empire overrun by foreign aggressors and rampant with human trafficking; a republic devastated by anarchy; a state saturated with oppression and corruption.
Is the hope of a new tomorrow real, or is it only an illusion crushed again and again under the wheels of history? Teahouse showcases Lao She's brilliant social and cultural commentary through a three dimensional depiction of the common and the grotesque, an international classic that remains eerily relevant today.
- August 2016
Fresh out of a critically-acclaimed run in Cambridge, a highly talented troupe of student dancers and performers bring you a contemporary circus interpretation of the family classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
Meet a break-dancing caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat dangling from a trapeze, and the Mad Hatter's tea party transforming into an even crazier juggling routine.
After witnessing such a variety of impressive performances, you will believe that six impossible things can happen before breakfast.
“A visual feast” - Cambridge Theatre Review (☆☆☆☆☆)
“Rapturous applause... Never has it been so well deserved” - The Tab (☆☆☆☆☆)
"Spellbinding" - Varsity (☆☆☆☆)
- August 2016
‘Three friends, knee deep in the weekend.’ And it’s time to make a change. This is it.
Rapid prose and rap-style poetry spin the story of three twenty-somethings seeking something more.
This electrifying, bittersweet play provides an offbeat take on the classic tale of youthful disillusionment. Written by award-winning performance poet Kate Tempest.
‘a strong, slick refreshingly new piece of theatre’ **** (The Tab)
‘a rare mixture of honesty and humour. Well worth a watch’ (The Cambridge Student)
- August 2016
New York City, 1955. Angie and her friends are having a dinner party. Their Mafioso husbands are off on another job, but the real story is unfolding in Angie’s living room.
Chronicling the violent and duplicitous events of one evening, ‘The Wives of Others’ (☆☆☆☆☆ TCS) promises foul-language, bloodshed and a lot of spaghetti. With an all-female cast and original script by one of Cambridge University’s most prolific playwrights, Tom Stuchfield (writer of ‘And The Horse You Rode In On’ ☆☆☆☆☆ The Tab ☆☆☆☆☆ EdFringeReview) this is a brutally stylish, Tarantino-esque, pitch-black comedy unlike anything you’ve seen.
Contact Rebecca (rsc45) and Rebecca (rt422) if you need any further details about applications or auditions.
- August 2016
The newly-divorced Harry Horner has spread a rumour of his own impotence around the country club. The reason? To seduce his way across the affluent, leafy town of Blandford, New England, come hell, high water or jealous husband. Relocated to suburban America by the team that ‘masterfully adapted’ (The Tab) Tristram Shandy for the stage, William Wycherley’s Restoration classic has never been funnier.
- May 2016
Alice travels across Europe with a battered Russian watch trying to track down her estranged father. On the mountains of the Italian-Austrian border, hikers descending a 3000 metre peak stumble on Otzi the Iceman, preserved there for 5000 years. In London, Virgil is piecing together memories of a fractured relationship, and waiting for Alice’s call.
First devised by pioneering theatre company Complicite, Mnemonic catches and entangles the memories it finds as it criss-crosses characters, places, and history. In its web of fragmented stories, the past blurs with the imagined as it is remembered and retold. It is beguiling, hallucinogenic, and hilarious.
An intimate and epic examination of memory, the original storyteller.
- May 2016
Inspired by a treatment method for psychosis in Finland, this experimental play explores the nature of schizophrenia by dividing the Corpus Playroom in two. Each side of the audience will view a different storyline but experience auditory hallucinations from the other side of the wall. We meet a mother and her two sons on the 'domestic' side, and the psychiatrist on the 'public'.
With a small cast and a lot of potential for creativity with staging, costume and unique dialogue, this darkly comic, deeply inventive and honest play will be the most exciting play next term!
- May 2016
When King Leontes suspects his wife of being unfaithful, he seeks his revenge, unaware of the consequences of such dramatic action. As the kingdom of Sicilia falls into chaos, Leontes laments his choice, and spends the next 16 years of his life in mourning. Meanwhile, far away in the distant land of Bohemia, a young shepherdess by the name of Perdita falls in love with a young Prince, and the two make plans to elope. Little do they know of their connection to the grieving King…
Shakespeare’s tale of grief and redemption stands as the most human of his works, deftly blending psychological tragedy with charming comedy. Bear witness to a host of colourful characters, several foot-stomping folk ballads, and the most surprising story The Bard ever told.
[Exit, pursued by a bear.]
- March 2016
This year's Lent Term Musical needs no introduction. West Side Story has enthralled audiences worldwide since it opened on Broadway over 50 years ago. The timeless appeal of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is carried into 1950s New York City, as star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria begin their narrative against the background of the rivalry of their respective gangs, the Jets and the Sharks.
This collaboration between three of musical theatre’s most iconic figures, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, features some of the most well known musical numbers of all time, including ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘America’.
- March 2016
‘Do they always do that?’
‘Who?’
‘The birds.’
‘No. It’s unusual. It’s the marsh. The marsh calls them. They’ve been coming a thousand years.’
Wattmore and Griffin are ex-Cambridge college gardeners, living with secrets and darkness in the bleakness of the Fens. A £2000 pound poetry prize run by the university could be the blessing they’re after to clear Wattmore’s mysterious debt, if only they knew anything about poetry. As bird-watchers flock to the marshes near their cabin to catch a glimpse of the elusive night heron, the arrival of ex-convict Bolla to this strange family brings an unexpected female force and their lives unravel before us.
Haunting and poetic, Butterworth’s second play brims with absurd humour and symbolic imagery. This Week 7 Lent show lays humanity bare in a setting we know well, but have not seen like this before.
Prepare for shock, for laughs and underscoring it all, the urgent howls of the freezing Cambridgeshire wind.
- February 2016
“I hear those voices that will not be drowned.”
It is 1912 in Walberswick and a young boy has died at sea. Peter Grimes is to blame, or so his fishing village thinks. Sentenced to isolation, Peter rebels against his community and takes a new apprentice, the sixteen-year-old son of his fiancée. Rumour spreads quickly on the wind and gossip rules the waves. A storm is coming for Peter Grimes…
Based on the beloved poem by George Crabbe, then made famous by Benjamin Britten’s opera, this new telling of the Grimes myth uses the death of a child to explore the dark and primal side of humanity, focused through an individual whose vicious isolation has troubled generations of writers.
- January 2016
‘They never asked about the women.’
When a city falls, its people must bear the wreckage. A live news crew will film the destruction but not the aftermath. It does not capture a mother looking for her lost boys, a fallen woman trying to keep up appearances, a young girl’s duty to pay off a bargain she’d never been participant to. They are merely numbers, tallied up figures for the television reports. They are not human. They are mere dolls.
Darkly humorous and epically tragic, Trojan Barbie is an exhilarating play. Placing characters of antiquity within the very real world of a military occupied refugee camp, the play explores how, after over two millennia, we are still no closer to solving the consequences of war and the people it leaves behind. Hecuba, Polyxena, Cassandra, Andromache, Helen of Troy and Lotte of Reading all hurtle towards their fate in this electric modern spectacle about war, its reverberations, and its women. Whether it's ancient myth or a vivid reality...
‘They never asked about the women.’
- January 2016
‘The worlds’s going to be a different place in ten years, everything’s that’s stopping us, what we’re told to do, what we’re told is the way to live, it’ll all be different, you can feel it.’
Sandra and Kenneth know the world is changing. Through the dope haze they grasp at the promised new tomorrow. As idealistic teens are hurtled into mid-life parenthood, it feels as though something has gone terribly wrong. The change has escaped somewhere with the smoke and empty wine bottles. Divorce, old age and retirement creep up just as quick and the 21st century offers our pair the rewards of the baby boom generation. Their children look on, bitter and angry. Generation X rails at the laissez-faire attitude of their parents that has condemned them. Olivier award winning playwright Mike Bartlett draws us into the generational debate and leaves us to make our minds up.
- November 2015
Creativity. Determination. Caffeine. These are just a few of the elements that go into a 24 Hour Play festival. 24 Hour Plays is a fast-paced, mad, and extremely fun gallop through the theatrical process, for both the participants and the spectators! 5 teams have 24 hours to write, rehearse, and perform short plays, which will be voted on by the audience. The results are completely unpredictable, but predictably fantastic. To the winner goes the glory -- and a good night's rest!
- November 2015
In medieval times, life was very different to now. There were huge divides between rich people and poor people.
There were also snazzy musical numbers, talking trees and a live audience watching the every move of a medium-sized town in the East Midlands. Welcome to Nottingham!
Here, the Sheriff’s long-term economic plan is in full swing, and everything is rosy; the caviar flows like water and the water flows if you pay your taxes. Yet all this is about to change. When Maid Marian has a chance encounter with Robin Hood, she sets in motion a tree-topping tale of love, lies and Marxist liberation that promises to blow the glass ceiling, and your minds.
Will the Sheriff’s iron rule be broken? Will Marian find what she is looking for? Will Scarlet is also there. Join us for this year’s glitziest, jazziest, sparkliest, socialist-est show of all, starring the cream of Cambridge’s comedy and musical worlds in the all-singing, all-dancing, CUADC/Footlights Pantomime: Robin Hood!
- November 2015
Sculptor Brindsley Miller has pulled out all the stops to impress his flighty new fiancée’s hard-nosed father and a millionaire art collector, including embellishing his humble apartment with furniture ‘borrowed’ from an absentee neighbour. Then, the lights go out!
Brindsley blindly struggles to salvage the evening, but the unexpected return of the neighbour, not to mention a surprise visit from a jealous ex-girlfriend, mean that he might be better off keeping everyone in the dark...
Watch what really happens when the lights go out in this uproarious comedy from Peter Shaffer.
- November 2015
Based on Jamila Gavin’s novel and first staged at the National Theatre in 2005, Coram Boy is an emotionally overwhelming play set against the backdrop of adolescent love, abandoned babies, cruelty, murder, social prejudice, friendship and the music of 18th century England.
At the heart of this play is the story of two boys from very different backgrounds. Alexander, the son of Lord Ashbrook and a musical prodigy, runs away from a life of duty as heir to the family estate in pursuit of personal and creative freedom. Meshak Gardiner is the impoverished, mentally-damaged son of the sinister Otis – a man who promises a better life for abandoned children. During their troubled adolescence these very different life journeys become intrinsically bound, particularly through Aaron, the illegitimate son Alexander unwittingly leaves behind.
Though Aaron starts his life in the Coram Hospital for Foundlings, as he grows into a young man it becomes clear that he has inherited his father’s musical ability, a gift that could ultimately reunite his family.
- November 2015
"He pats her... his patting becomes beating and he continues beating her even though she's screaming..."
Nancy’s existence is on hold until she finds Rhona, her missing 10 year old daughter. Agnetha wonders if her work investigating the minds of criminals is starting to affect her own thoughts. Meanwhile Ralph, sitting on a bench, feels the hot sun on his face, and spies the next little girl he’d like to keep him company for a while. The mother, the academic, and the perpetrator are drawn together, culminating in a shocking confrontation.
Frozen dares to ask whether it’s possible to understand the minds of serial killers, and ultimately to forgive them.
- November 2015
'I heard y'all talkin' about killin' Momma. I think it's a good idea.'
Dallas, Texas. The Smiths are just like any other American family. 6 grand in debt to drug barons, they hire 'Killer' Joe Cooper, a detective-cum-contract-killer, to murder their estranged matriarch for her sizeable life insurance policy. When Joe demands a rather unusual retainer for his services, a simple plan spirals dangerously out of control.
Explosive, gory and darkly funny, this Southern Gothic pulp classic by Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Letts (Bug, August Osage County) has been causing controversy, on stage and screen, since it premiered in 1993.
- October 2015
Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.
Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.
Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale.
FRANKENSTEIN was first presented at the National Theatre, London on 5 February 2011, directed by Danny Boyle
- October 2015
"It is now one hour before dawn - when I must dismiss us both. When I return, I'll tell you about the war I fought with God through His preferred Creature - Mozart, named Amadeus. In the waging of which, of course, the Creature had to be destroyed."
It is 1823. Vienna. The famous composer Salieri is ill and dying. For him, it seems, his final hours on earth are not just for reminiscing, but confessing. Amadeus is the story of that confession - of how Salieri made a deal with God in the hope of gaining talent, and how the greater genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned everything upside down. Upon witnessing Mozart's extraordinary talents first-hand, Salieri starts down a course of action with dark and dangerous consequences for both men.
Peter Shaffer's play is a costume tragedy for the stage, taking the audience back into the world of the Viennese court of the 18th century and exploring the personal, and political motivations behind the facades. An ensemble of exotic and lively characters people his world, a world where music is intertwined with intrigue, sexual bargaining, and gossip. The play itself has been through multiple versions since its first run in 1979 (with Ian McKellen and Tim Curry in the leading roles), including one oscar winning film. Twice director of Amadeus Peter Hall has said that the current play has evolved massively from a melodrama into what it is today "while keeping its thrills and its intellectual edge, it has become a profoundly humanist play about forgiveness and atonement."
- August 2015
Come and explore the streets of Milton Keynes. Walk with the homeless, shout with the angry, cry with the confused and laugh with the posh people with s**t on their shoe. Their dramas converge to seek solace in the only place with the lights on (from 12am-3am). Inside lies a waitress who cares about everyone’s story except one woman’s… who feels left out, and has a gun. Welcome to the tragic madness that is the ‘Midnight Cafe’.
- August 2015
A new farce of dark comedy and pamplemousses set in the sexy, cloak and dagger world of Art History. It's 19--, and the fashion for using dashes to indicate a vague date is taking Paris by storm. Everyone becomes very, very confused when Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire are arrested for the recent theft of the Mona Lisa (this is almost a history fact). Can they prove their innocence? Can they persuade their next door neighbour that they are not having an affair with his wife? And, most importantly, can they find the right word to describe the Mona Lisa's smile? Find out in this one-door tragi-farce, the latest product from the invent-a-genre warehouse.
- August 2015
A darker side to William Shakespeare’s most popular comedy.
With the moon rising over Athens, four lovers escape a tyrannical judgement and seek solace in the woods, only to be caught in a macabre fairy plot. Desire and domination are bound together as Oberon bends a defiant Titania to his will. Meanwhile, mortal lives become playthings as a mischievous Puck play cupid. Mischief leads to malevolence and devotion dissolves into obsession in this infamous tale. Shakespeare's comedy is given a darker edge: reality is twisted beyond recognition and dream tips into nightmare.
- May 2015
2015.
There’s a new general at Army Headquarters.
Othello’s appointment sparks controversy, because of her gender as well as her ethnicity. Behind the combat training, military expeditions and national scrutiny, some personal conflicts are at play.
Iago’s jealousy begins to manifest itself.
The soldiers and their loved ones are dragged into a melee of suspicion, resentment and revenge.
This dynamic and boldly original take on Shakespeare’s powerhouse tragedy explores a new framework of mistrustful relationships, gender politics and discrimination.
“In following [her] I follow but myself… I am not what I am.”
- May 2015
‘Do you believe in ghosts?'
Miss Jessel is dead. A new governess arrives at the remote estate of Bly to find two children of absolute perfection.
But as she grows to love the orphans, strange occurrences start to haunt the house. As the secrets of the manor are revealed, the governess begins to doubt if she can protect the children or herself.
