- July 2024
"I’m just as good as bloody Pierrepoint." So says Harry, in his small pub in Oldham where he is something of a local celebrity. But what’s the second-best hangman in England to do on the day they’ve abolished hanging?
Among the cub reporters and sycophantic pub regulars dying to hear Harry’s reaction to the news, a peculiar stranger lurks, with a very different motive for his visit, telling the regulars:"‘Don’t worry. I may have my quirks but I’m not an animal. Or am I? One for the courts to discuss."
Set mostly in Harry’s Oldham pub in 1965, Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London in September 2015. It received the 2016 Olivier Award for Best New Play, with the Daily Telegraph describing it as "Pitch perfect…Perhaps the most line-by-line funny play London has seen in years."
- April 2024
- December 2023
- July 2023
“That is the story of our beginning. And this is the story of the end.”
A beautiful and enduring play about lifelong love from the multi Emmy and BAFTA award-winning writer of The Split, The Hour, River, Suffragette and The Iron Lady. Devised in collaboration with Frantic Assembly forerunners in the world of physical theatre, this is an original, tender, and unforgettable insight into a relationship. It is the story of one couple, told from two different points in their lives - as young lovers in their twenties and as worldly companions looking back on their relationship.
Time melts away as an older woman walks into the wardrobe and her younger self walks out. An older man dances with the memory of his young wife as his younger self discovers the woman his wife will become. Through the constant flow and interaction of dialogue, music, visual imagery, and dance, the days and years of their life together become fluid in the affections, regrets and memory of one man. A brave, absorbing drama and unique theatre experience presented by a talented cast and company.
- June 2023
Frank is a frustrated poet and brilliant academic whose disillusioned outlook on life drives him to drink and bury himself in his books. Enter Rita who is eager to learn and slowly wins over the hesitant Frank with her innate insight and refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer. Their relationship as a tutor and student blossoms, ultimately giving Frank a new sense of self and Rita the knowledge she so craves.
Full of humour and poignancy, this beautifully written play is as relevant and unmissable today as it was in 1980, when it first hit the stage.
- April 2023
- July 2022
Award winning classic British comedy based on the much-loved 1955 film. Crime doesn’t pay – but it can be hilarious! Since 1955, the classic comedy film has entertained audiences worldwide and is now transformed into a multi-award winning play by Graham Linehan, co-creator of Father Ted and The IT crowd. Criminal mastermind, Professor Marcus, and his gang of oddball villains posing as musicians, meet their match when they take up residence in Mrs Wilberforce’s dilapidated house. They figure their sweet-natured old landlady will be easily hoodwinked. But beneath her demure exterior, Mrs Wilberforce is made of sterner stuff and, in the end, she turns the tables on the bogus quintet. Crime doesn’t pay –but it can be hilarious!
- March–April 2022
May 1789 - a fleet of eleven ships containing 759 convicts set sail for the other side of the world. The convicts are allowed to perform the first British play ever to be staged in Australia to celebrate George III’s birthday. With only two copies of the text, a cast of disaffected convicts and one leading lady about to be hanged, the rehearsal process is far from straight forward for their inexperienced director, Lieutenant Ralph Clark. Despite the brutality, starvation and hardships the convicts learn to respect and support one another as they work together to create a “memorable” production of The Recruiting Officer.
- December 2021
Mizzis Horrocks’ class of seven year olds is about to perform their nativity play at Flint Street Junior School for the proud mums and dads. Squabbles arise when Gabriel wants to play Mary, the Star grumbles he’s not a proper star like they have at NASA, Herod won’t stop waving to his mum and dad, and the subversive Innkeeper is determined to liven up the traditional script. And then the stick insect escapes… The children are played by adults in this warm, witty, funny play by the author of Calendar Girls, featuring songs with original lyrics set to the tunes of familiar Christmas carols.
- July 2021
Combining elements of comedy, tragedy and farce, The Playboy of the Western World is set in a remote village on the coast of Country Mayo in the west of Ireland. There is great excitement when a young man on the run from the police seeks shelter for the night in the village public house. His crime transforms him from an intensely shy young man to a local hero, but events unfold which cast doubt on his new-found status. After scandalising upright Dublin citizens at its premiere in 1907, this tragicomic masterpiece has been delighting and entertaining audiences the world over ever since.
- July 2019
With a principal cast of four playing a minimum of 139 roles, The 39 Steps will be the most astonishing theatrical experience for everyone.
- April 2019
Can science advance without ego? A fast paced and moving, award winning, play dramatising Rosalind Franklin's part in the discovery of the structure of DNA.
- December 2018
- July 2017
August 1914, Wakes Week in Greenmill, and preparations are underway for the annual Rushbearing Festival. War rumbles in the distance, but, for now, family feuds, a blossoming romance and rehearsals for Morris dancing are the main preoccupations. The older men are concerned to preserve the old traditions, but as the younger ones prepare to enlist, to what will they return – if they return at all? Voted Best New Play of 2014 at the UK Theatre Awards, An August Bank Holiday Lark is warm, funny, sad, moving, and full of the shared humanity of a long established community coping with grief and the changes facing it in a world that will never be the same again.
- April 2017
- December 2016
- July 2016
The year is 1940. The Blitz burns the heart of London while the disgraced Rev. Lawrence Shannon survives as a third-rate tour guide an ocean away in Mexico. As his latest tour group unravels amid claims of his improprieties, he purposely strands his guests at a remote bohemian jungle hotel run by an old friend. But his desperate bid to quell the fires raging in his soul is cut short by a menagerie of hotel residents who compromise and confuse his fragile state of mind. Tennessee Williams’s rarely performed, fascinating and haunting love story lays bare the secret insecurities common to us all.
- July 2015
'It’s wanting to know that makes us matter'. Combined Actors are proud to present Stoppard's fizzing comedy of ideas, which won both the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best New Play. Arcadia is set in a Derbyshire country house during both the Regency and the late twentieth century: academic researchers argue their theories about the events of 1809, juxtaposed with scenes of what really happened during Lord Byron’s visit. Arcadia combines a literary detective story with discussions on the rise of Romanticism, mathematics, landscape gardening, why you can’t unstir the jam from your rice pudding, and the eventual death of the universe - culminating in a waltz which resolves the arguments across two centuries.
- April 2015
- July 2014
Paul Fisher is a really nice guy - even if he's a bit of an endearing jerk. He only has one problem: he doesn't have a 'plus one'. And he desperately needs a 'plus one'. Like now. Why? He's just received an invitation to the second wedding of his ex-wide and the invitation includes - you guessed it - a 'plus one'. And the wedding is next week! What's a man to do in these desperate circumstances? Dive into the murky waters of internet dating, that's what, and arrange seven dates with seven prospective 'plus ones' in seven days - all of whom look remarkably like his mother!
- March 2014
- October 2013
Shortly before the start of WWII, Britain agreed to take in 10,000 unaccompanied children from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia in an attempt to free them from the growing threat of Nazi terror.
Kindertransport literally means the ‘transportation of children’ and Diane Samuels’ play is an account of how one child was affected by this separation from her family - how fear followed her, how she tried to deny her roots and how important this became in her relationship with her own daughter.
In this play, there is a recurring theme of the Ratcatcher. He is rooted in the original tale of the pied piper of Hamlyn, who lures children away. His presence creates fear and foreboding, personifying the threat to the Jews who were compared to rats in German propaganda.
Eva is sent to Britain to escape the threat but survival comes at a price. As she accepts a new life in England and a new name 'Evelyn', she learns to hide behind a façade of order and control.
This play reveals the love and pain in mother / daughter relationships; the dilemma that tells a parent to send their child away to avoid mortal danger when that child, in Diane Samuels’ words “will, in most cases, say they’d rather stay and die with their parents”.
Kindertransport shows the consequences of such actions and the subsequent search for identity.
- March 2013
The Killing of Sister George follows the professional and personal demise of the popular district nurse who selflessly ministers to the villagers in the fictional radio-soap Applehurst However, in real life and amongst her colleagues, she is the antithesis of the sweet character she plays. Against this back-drop, the play combines comedy and pathos as it follows June’s domestic relationship with the childlike and manipulative Alice McNaught. With the sudden insecurity of her character’s future, their insecure relationship becomes increasingly more self-centred than supportive.
Following highly-acclaimed runs of the original productions in the West End and on Broadway, most people may now best remember the play from the iconic 1968 film which featured Beryl Reid in the title role. Now it comes to the ADC Theatre to explore the blurred reality of fictional soaps and the even stranger real lives behind the scenes.
- July 2005
