- October–November 2024
Join our Miltonathon Commemorating the 350th anniversary of Milton’s death
About the project
2024 marks the 350th anniversary of Milton’s death. To commemorate, Milton’s Cottage Trust is staging a collective reading of Milton’s work online.
From actors to academics, politicians to prisoners, students to stagehands, this will be a collective performance by literature lovers everywhere. Contributions are being made from across the globe. As part of these celebrations’ a pre-recorded version of Milton’s poem Samson Agonistes is being made with Cambridge students.
When it takes place
The 24-hour Miltonathon will take place on 8th November 2024 – 350 years from the date of Milton’s death. The event will start at 11am GMT, taking approximately 24 hours to complete, and will include both live and pre-recorded segments.
Here is a link to further information about the event should you wish to know
more: https://www.miltonscottage.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Miltonathon_invitation-to- participate-2.pdf
How you can get involved
In advance of the event Milton’s long poem Samson Agonistes will be pre-recorded as a bespoke film. We are looking to recruit as many readers as possible for this project. Each of the seven parts in the poem will be shared by numerous speakers and edited together to create a complete dramatic reading. Participants record the sections themselves and are assigned readings which are as long or short as each individual wishes. The finished film will be streamed as part of the Miltonathon and then preserved as an educational resource by the Milton Cottage Trust.
If you would be able to give a reading as part of this project please fill in this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PPYRDlQj3XeMJmNDTiecQOuGydaOOcthvmMARwXLIMM
to find out more please contact Aelfred Hillman: arh218@cam.ac.uk
- March 2024
California, 1973. Rick, a musician and dancer, is shot dead.
Was it Gideon, his drug-happy co-performer? Maggie, his older lover, and actress herself? Roberta, Rick's bodyguard? Or one of the other oddball guests? As Rick's friends investigate, one murder follows another, and as it turns out, no-one is safe. With a host of hilarious, way-out characters, outspoken dialogue and a mystery that keeps the audience guessing until the last minute, Cracks will entertain you in dark and unexpected ways.
- November 2023
It’s A Christmas Carol, but Scrooge’s greatest crime, over being tight-fisted money hungry boss, is that he forgets his northern heritage and chooses to spend his Christmas in… London! Filled with smash hits like ‘Let it Sludge’ and ‘Away in a Pret-a-Manger’, A Christ’s-mas Carol is the best, silliest and most over-the-top way to celebrate bridgemas
- November 2023
We're back, and funnier than ever! Your favourite famously mediocre night has returned (again) to showcase Cambridge's best comedic performers. Whether you're a stand-up guy, a sketch girlie or an average comedy song enjoyer, we've got a night of free entertainment for you!
- April 2023
A GARDEN-VARIETY SHOW IS BACK!
Your host Ariel Hebditch welcomes you to Christ's College Buttery once again for one night only! Join us on 28th April for a fabulous free night of entertainment! From poetry to stand-up, monologues to musical numbers, catch the creme de la creme of Cambridge performers for the low, low price of...well, nothing!
- March 2023
Do you love the limelight? Do you envision a blue plaque on your childhood home and your underwear selling for 50 quid on ebay? Do you want to be famous (even if it is just for fifteen minutes)?
Well, these guys sure do...they're in Cambridge comedy, what did you expect? Join our sketch comedians as they wrestle with their own egos, tackle celebrity culture to the ground and punch Andy Warhol in the face. We ask what it means to be famous in past lives, present lives and afterlives, and you ask how you can fill an hour's sketch show with such a narrow concept. From multi-millionaire movie stars to anonymous fanfic writers, this show casts its satirical eye on fame in all its forms, and if you happen to catch us by the stage door, we might just give you our autographs.
please note the recent time change of Sunday's performance: it will now begin at 9:30
- October 2022
Roll Up! Roll Up! Join host Ariel Hebditch as she introduces you to the most sensational acts Cambridge has to offer! From poetry to stand-up comedy, from monologues to musical numbers, this all-new variety show is different every night and guaranteed to leave you entertained! And what's more? It's free! That's right, ladies and gents (and everything in between), a night of high-quality entertainment for the low, low price of...well, nothing! So, come on down to Christ's Buttery for what promises to be nothing less than (and hopefully something more than) A Garden-Variety Show!
- August 2022
A witch coven consisting of three friends, Margaret, Emily and Lawrence, are highly unsuccessful in their activities. Margaret, the leader of the coven, takes her magic seriously, while Lawrence can’t tell the difference between magic and life hacks, and Emily just wants to keep their friendship alive. But when they summon a demon called Graham, master of banal evil, with grand, but underwhelming plans, their friendship is tested in ways they previously hadn’t thought possible.
This fantastic new comedy by Barnaby M. Evans draws on themes of friendship, witchcraft and Shrek 2 to weave a tale of magic and mirth, and will continue its tumultuous run at the Edinburgh Fringe this year!!!
- June 2022
"To die, sweet Spenser, therefore live we all;
Spenser, all live to die, and rise to fall.”
Christ's May Week Shakespeare returns... as May Week Marlowe!
When Gaveston, favourite to King Edward, returns from exile in France, he is faced with a court intent on his removal. Once the establishment closes ranks against an infatuated king, how long can Edward hold onto his lover?
Join us in the Chapel for Marlowe's homoerotic tale of divine right, scorned queens, and desire at odds with duty.
- April 2022
CADS PRESENTS: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST!✨💗✨😌
You’ve met Oscar Wilde! You’ve met the Kardashians! What happens when you mix the absurdity of high Victorian society with the decadence and luxury of modern LA? A hilarious night of outrageousness, wit, and eccentricity. 💍🎩✨Join us for a farce about mistaken identity, secret engagements, and lovers entanglements, set among the opulence and affluence of Southern California! ✨💸💗
CHRIST'S CHAPEL, 7.30 PM 💒
29/04 & 30/04
DON’T MISS IT! ✨💗🎩💃🏻👰♀️💍💒💗✨
- March 2022
The Captive is a play first staged in 1926 in Paris which, upon being staged on Broadway, was one of the first to have an explicitly lesbian character. It’s a play with an amazing history: after 160 performances, the show was not only shut down but led to the passage of the Wales Padlock Act banning depictions of homosexuality on Broadway stages. Part of a canon of LGBT+ plays from an era pre-empting a more repressive time in American theatre, this show is being staged with an all-female/NB cast with an emphasis on its historical context.
The play tells the story of Jacques, a man in love with his friend Irene, who in turn is a lesbian struggling to hide her lover, Madame d’Aguines. The play is a compelling story of unrequited love and the navigation of relationships and homosexuality in the early twentieth century.
- March 2022
We've taken Henrik Ibsen's "unstageable" drama and Edvard Grieg's classical incidental music, and turned it into a brand new, original jazz reinterpretation. Performed live by a three-piece jazz band and a cast of three, 'Peer Gynt' is half-way between a piece of theatre and jazz gig.
Peer Gynt supposedly lives a life alongside princes, trolls and magic animals -- but everyone knows he’s lying!
His story, a tragic comedy, a realistic fantasy, and a satyrical biography, spans an entire lifetime and half the known world. Along the way, he procrastinates, flees, explores, loves, regrets, and learns.
- March 2022
- February 2022
Claire and her wife, Kit have just moved to North-East coastal town, South Shields from London to start their family life, to be closer to Kit’s family and to be near to the sea. Claire is pregnant with their first child and is starting a job at the local comprehensive school as the inclusion officer when she meets a student called Fish. Fish is a non-binary student with an obsession with wild swimming; Claire soon learns from Fish that her students can teach her just as much as she can them.
‘Out of Water’ is a tale exploring gender, wild swimming and how we define who we are. First performed at the Orange Tree Theatre in 2019.
Licensed by arrangement with The Agency, 24 Pottery Lane, Holland Park, London W11 4LZ info@theagency.co.uk
- January 2022
A sketch show which will be dark and satirical in bent, concerning itself with FOOD! How do we consume it? Market it? How do we perceive/judge others who eat/don't eat certain foods? Gets to the heart of people, no? COMEDY!
- January 2022
Katie became bored of her life just as The Man walked into it and announced that he had sold his life on eBay for a couple of million quid. Suddenly, boredom is no longer in Katie's vocabulary as she begins to fall into the farce of friendship and mystery that The Man carries with him.
Who is The Man? Why did he sell his life? Could his idea of buying a Caribbean island be everything that Katie has longed for? Is Ben Shephard from Tipping Point just a rip off from Bradley Walsh?
These are all important questions that are asked and answered in this intimate, entertaining play about love, friendship and the sheer boredom of everyday life.
- November 2021
Culhwch and Olwen by Christ’s student Alys Williams is an updated pantomime adaptation of a medieval Welsh text of the same name. Culhwch, a Welsh prince, is cursed to only love one woman: Olwen, top student of Ysbaddaden, Chief Giant and Doctor of the Hunt. Ysbaddaden does not want his topper of tripos to date Culhwch and sets the prince impossible tasks to prevent it. However, with the help of King Arthur and his Knight Club, Culhwch quests across Cambria-Ridge, the best university in all of Medieval Wales, and beyond, where we meet a host of pantomime characters including muddling knights, lovesick queens, and the true bane of any student's life: academic rigour.
- November 2021
Two short farces by Chekhov, ostensibly exploring themes of love and loss, but with a heavy dose of materialist conflict - a commentary as applicable to today as to Chekhov's Russia.
- October 2021
Christ's College’s May Week Shakespeare play is back with the hilariously absurd "The Comedy of Errors" on Fresher's Week 2021! Join us in the Fellow's Garden for Shakespeare's riotous tale of wild mishaps and mistaken identities. Two sets of twins accidentally separated at birth cross paths in the Greek city of Ephesus, causing confusion and chaos on a grand scale. From a near-seduction to wrongful accusations of demonic possession, theft and infidelity, all hell breaks loose in the most absurd way possible.
- January 2021
N.B. this show has been cancelled
Culhwch and Olwen is a pantomime adaptation of a medieval Welsh text in which Culhwch, a Welsh prince, is cursed to only love one woman: Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden, Chief Giant. Ysbaddaden does not want his daughter to marry Culhwch and sets the prince impossible tasks to prevent them from marrying. However, with the help of King Arthur Culhwch completes the tasks and the two lovers marry. In this updated and pantomimed version of an already hilarious text we roam Cambria-Ridge, the best university in all of Medieval Wales, alongside a host of pantomime characters including muddling knights, lovesick queens, and the true bane of any student's life: acadmic rigour. But don’t take our word for it, come along and watch!
Dates TBC
- December 2020
Join Alex as she travels through time to seminal moments in Christie College’s history to find the cure for the pandemic that ruined 2020: peroni-virus
- November 2020
"What makes you who you are? A name? An address? A random collection of experiences, a few memories?... You are who you can prove you are. And that's the easiest thing in the world to change." When a young executive reaches breaking point and decides to disappear, he pays a visit to a master of the craft in a seafront fortune tellers in Southend. Haunted by visitations from a pathologist who swears he is already lying flat out on her slab, he begins a nightmarish journey to the edge of existence that sees him stripped of everything that made him who he was.
- June 2020
Mr Shakespeare once said that "brevity is the sould of wit", in which case this play, or should I say plays, is very funny indeed. Join us as the bard himself presents 5 student written Shakespearean plays condensed into 10 minute comedies.
- December 2019
Harry Spatz is a hapless man whose life is dictated by the random outbursts of song that follow him and those he loves. When his girlfriend is promised to another man, can he rewrite the lyrics?
Christ's panto is back promising a hilarious night and an unofficial drinking game
- June 2019
“Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”
A lost generation return from the war to the warmth and glamour of Messina; with jazz in the air and the cocktails free-flowing, the stage is set for a fabulous romance. But Benedick and Beatrice are at each other’s throats, a bitter history blinding them to how perfect they are for each other. Claudio and Hero are in love, but lies and jealousy are forcing them apart. As Don Pedro works to mastermind his friends’ love lives, his bastard brother Don John works to undermine them, resulting in a hilarious mess of misunderstandings.
Much Ado About Nothing is a play of elaborate schemes, scandalous gossip, and love lost and found, all set in the glamorous post-war chaos of the 1920s. Relaxing in the Christ’s beautiful Fellow’s Garden, under the glittering lights of Milton’s mulberry tree, prepare to enjoy a wild night of May Week entertainment.
- June 2019
There is a light in the darkness, there is hope in the exam despair, there is a buttery in Christ's 1st court ... And on the 10th June this Buttery will become your oasis in the week 7 desert, hosting a chill night of comedy that is FREE for all and in very close proximity to a bar... Bring your friends, maybe don't bring your family, and definitely leave your stresses at home - we look forward to seeing you at 8pm!!
- February–March 2019
'I did what I thought you should have done. Taken care of her. Taken very good care of her. Like she was broken. 'Cept I thought I could fix her. Thought I'd do anything to fix her. Used to wish it on eyelashes.'
Mia is at boarding school. She has access to drugs. They are Martha's. Henry is preparing for Art College. He has access to alcohol. From Martha. Martha controls their lives. Martha is their mother.
The winner of the TMA Award 2007 for Best New Play, Stenham's debut play 'That Face' delves into the life of a family that is falling apart, a family which exists in a liminal space in which parents become children, good people do bad things, and family relationships are turned on their head.
'Crammed with startling images, ferocious cruelty and pitch-black humour, it is insolent, audacious, witty and wise.' - The Times
- January 2019
Come join us in the ADC bar for an evening of monologues from some of Cambridge's finest student performers. A great opportunity for audiences and actors alike to see extracts from brilliant plays that they may never have heard of before and to stretch their skills for that next big audition.
New this term, our Clashes will be themed, first off the Classical Clash – all our performers will be performing monologues from greats such as Marlowe and Shakespeare, wiith our second theme to be announced later in term!
- November 2018
CADS presents its annual pantomime - this year, how will six Christ's students fare when they are forced to take part in the popular children's TV show Raven? Meanwhile, in a post-bear world, a gang of Wild West fast-shooters battle an unlikely foe.
- October 2018
“Theatre should be grand, vulgar, simple, pathetic – not genteel, not poetical.”
So said Joan Littlewood, artistic director of the infamous Theatre Workshop and developer of the seminal 'Oh, What a Lovely War!', first performed in 1963. Born of a revolutionary collaborative process, this so-called ‘epic musical’ shook a nation with its visceral portrayal of the first world war. Both riotously entertaining and profoundly affecting, there is no other play which combines the same level of cultural significance and timeless appeal. Come to be enraged, come to be entertained – come and be part of 'Oh, What a Lovely War!'
4.5 stars from Varsity: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/16259
5 stars from The Tab: https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2018/10/15/review-oh-what-a-lovely-war-114512
Listed in The Tab's top five shows of Michaelmas 2018: https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2018/12/03/tab-roundup-michaelmas-theatre-highlights-118438
- October 2018
The Monologue Clash returns and this time its in the Bar! An evening of Cambridge's finest performing monologues from the entire history of theatre. A chance to see extracts of new plays you may never have heard of, and find monologues for the next big audition!
- June 2018
"A wild dedication of yourselves / To undiscovered waters, undreamed shores..."
Camillo, Act IV, Scene 4 of The Winter's Tale
CADS is bringing the undreamed shores of Shakespeare's Bohemia to the Christ's College Fellows' Garden, in an immersive outdoor production of the beloved comedy-romance. King Leontes and King Polixenes are boyhood friends, but unfounded suspicions begin to corrupt Leontes' court and a fantastical chain of events is set into motion. Young love blossoms and family members are lost and found in this summer festival of a production.
The performance invites the audience into a vibrant world of kings, shepherds, and the odd bear. Join us amongst the trees for a sparkling evening of May Week entertainment!
- May 2018
‘I’ve got to try right? Because we’ve tried everything else.’
Young mum Kat is a woman on a mission, but when she kisses her daughter goodbye one morning no one could have anticipated the consequences - least of all herself. Unable to comprehend her actions, Tommy, Catherine and Jo each try to pick up the pieces - but, as the years go by, should Kat concede all her bridges have been burned?
Winner of a Bruntwood Prize Judges Award in 2015, Parliament Square is a dazzling exploration of family, fantasy, and what it takes to change the world - and how far one woman will go to light that spark.
- March 2018
Massacre At Paris is a play which exposes the brutal fight between Protestants and Catholics during the height of religious tensions in 16th Century France and explores the futile nature of this battle to establish religious dominance.
The instability within the royal establishment leads Catherine de Medici to get her hands dirty in order to protect the throne for her issue.
Performed candlelit against the dark back drop of Christ's College Chapel, this unique production of Marlowe's final play provides an opportunity to witness this rarely-performed work in an atmospheric and imaginative setting.
tickets
https://cads.tessera.info/tickets/massacre-at-paris-by-christopher-marlow
if you have any questions about accessibility or arrangements that need to be made please get in contact with Hattie Hammans or Isobel Griffiths
- February 2018
To kick off 2018, CADS is starting a series of new events bringing the Monologue Clash to Cambridge. An evening to see 10 great actors perform a monologue of there choosing from all of theatre-history!
A great opportunity for audiences and actors alike to get to see extracts from brilliant plays they may never have heard of before as well as stretch their skills for that next big audition.
There will be an element of competition with the audience being able to anonymously vote their favourite. The winner receiving a £15 amazon voucher - however the aim of this event is to showcase great performances and great plays, so come along for what is sure to be a great night of theatre!.
- November–December 2017
The year is 1978, and Christmas draws near. Brian Cocks, inter-dimensional twin of the physics documentarian, is about to take over the world.
Only Zavid Blowie, Princess Leah, and the inhabitants of a poorly maintained student house stand in his way. Will they manage to defy the desires of the evil Cocks, or will the world instead be plunged into decades of horrifying neo-liberalism?
The CADS Panto - the perfect antidote to the actual panto
Come for the bizarre storyline, stay for the drinking game.
