- June 2019
'With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,'
In the midst of May Week revelries, the conflict between two gangs threatens to disturb the peace. Presented by the newly revived Murray Edwards theatre society The Arden Players, this show will bring one of Shakespeare's most famous plays to life in the college gardens, exploring summer love with all its joys and consequences.
Join us in Orchard Court, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean...
- March 2019
- June 2018
‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air.’
Come and enter the dark and dystopic world of history's most divisive magician, his plots and his ploys, his beliefs and choices - and your own. Good against evil, black against white, woman against man, all is at stake on the game-board of the Island. Who knows what? Who's watching who? Shakespeare’s last and arguably darkest play will leave you doubting your own role in the revels of this world. Join us in the magical surroundings of Murray Edwards Gardens for a May Week extravaganza like no other. It's time to pick your side...
The Tempest is coming...
- June 2018
‘It’s poison. It poisons everything.’
It's 1989. Juliet wants to be a Page Three girl, but she isn’t getting any jobs.
All Paula wants is for her daughter to be happy, but she worries about Juliet.
Sian frowns upon her best friend's career choice - she fears the tainting impact of pornography on her relationship with boyfriend Mark.
Elly, a former glamour model herself, now works as a booker for Mike Angels; she's committed to breaking Juliet into the industry, though perhaps not in the way that Juliet envisaged.
'Next To You I Lie' examines the glamour model industry of the 1980s and its potentially corrosive effects on human relationships. It was devised in 1989 by Trouble & Strife, a women’s theatre company founded by students of New Hall (now Murray Edwards) with the explicit aim of producing work ‘by, for and about women’. The play explores themes that are still worryingly relevant today, raising questions about self-image, objectification, and the validity of relationships between men and women in a society that is inherently misogynistic.
For the first time ever, the Murray Edwards bar – part of Chamberlain, Powell and Bon’s exciting brutalist architecture for the college – will be transformed into a theatre space, and used to stage a play which is the product of some of the college's own inspiring feminist alumni.
- February–March 2018
E is struggling to come to terms with her changing body, R is obsessed with a 1940s movie star, and O and J are doing a parental practice run. As the action unfolds, their stories intersect and these disparate threads become interwoven by common themes so that, by the end, they have each grown into themselves a little more. The play combines moments of intimate duologues and near-poetic monologues, as well as a very human will to find humour in some of the darkest things.
Ultimately, it explores femininity, love, and how it feels to know the world wasn’t quite made for you.
- February 2018
★ HUMOUR US ★ is is a brand new comedy night for comedians (experienced or otherwise) who identify as female, non-binary and trans. Stand-up, sketches, songs -- anything funny, we want to see it! We want to showcase the talents of anyone discouraged from participating in comedy through a lack of representation, and promote integration between Cambridge University and ARU.
NB. Earlier in the day we will be running a free ★ COMEDY WORKSHOP ★ at Trinity Hall Lecture Theatre with our ★ HEADLINER AND SPECIAL GUEST ★ Lulu Popplewell.
★ PARTICIPATION IN THIS EVENT IS 100% OPEN TO (AND ENCOURAGED FOR) STUDENTS AT ARU ★
- October 2017
MADHOUSE IS BACK!! And we’re now opening up slots for our variety launch night on the 28th October in Murray Edwards Bar.
We’re looking for acts of all kinds, so whether you've always loved performing stand up, you want to try out some new sketches, the challenge of bringing physical theatre to the Medwards bar appeals or you want to plug an upcoming show with a cheeky preview, we’d love to hear from you!
To sign up, email eg504@cam.ac.uk with your name and a brief description of your act.
- June 2017
'This blessed, plot, this earth, this realm, this England'
We're bringing you Richard II like you've never seen it before. A tale of matriarchal victory, reminders of our connection to nature and the dangers of arrogance are all bought to you in the beautiful Murray Edwards Gardens.
- August 2016
FLOSS is a brand new shiny sketch show by Eleanor, Orlando and Dillon.
Join these three Cambridge Footlights for a feel-good hour of dizzying highs and devastatingly crushing lows. You don't want to miss out!!!
From the people who brought you The Cambridge Footlights International Tour Show 2015: Love Handles, Footlights Pantomime 2015: Robin Hood and are preparing for The Cambridge Footlights International Tour Show 2016: Lagoon, comes another stupid sketch show.
Previous praise:
“Impeccably written and performed” Varsity
“Some of the best comic acting I have ever seen” The Tab
“Its unique brand of humour is as wonderful as it is weird; its sharp intelligence deftly balanced with a charming lack of pretension” The Tab
“Probably the best student comedy performance I have ever seen.” The Tab
“This is one student sketch show you don’t want to miss” Broadway Baby
“Consistently brilliant” EdFringe Review
N.B. FLOSS is not performing on 15 or 22 August.
- June 2012
Eurydice is married to Orpheus, a musician who, in her opinion, plays the violin badly. Fed up with her husband, she falls for the randy and devious Pluto and is soon caught up in a somewhat hellish situation. Meanwhile, bored to tears and spying an interesting situation unfolding, Public Opinion muscles in to ‘help’ Orpheus rescue his wife. But does she want to be rescued? Offenbach’s catchy tunes and wicked sense of humour, all culminating in his riotous ‘Cancan’, take the characters from one ridiculous situation to another!
'Orpheus in the Underworld' will be performed as the finale of Murray Edwards May Week Arts festival, on the grounds of the college.
- November 2011
What happens when you arrive at dinner party where host is unconscious and has a bullet wound in his earlobe? Do you phone the police? Or try and cover it up for fear of what the neighbours might say? From the mind of four time Tony Award winner "Neil Simon", comes a brilliant comical farce about the lengths some people will go to to save face.
- October 2010
Lottie is depressed. She can’t continue with her cosy yet meaningless middle-class existence any longer. She has tried to commit suicide once before and is about to do so again when she is interrupted by Rachel, a door-to-door saleswoman. As they talk, each woman reveals her own secrets and Rachel attempts to persuade Lottie to tell Michael, her seemingly unsympathetic husband, that her depression is getting worse. Will Lottie make this bold move? And will it change anything?
- February 2009
Telltale Productions in association with MadHouse present: THE HEIGHTS
This is the story of the House in the Wilderness...
Ambrose looks after his four companions in his House in the Wilderness. They don’t know how they got there, they never have visitors, and they never open the front door. Ambrose makes them soup (which they don’t particularly like), he plays chess with them (which they don’t particularly like), and he takes away their prized possessions (which is what they really don’t like) and strings them up above the dinner table along with a very old, and very special, apple...
But The Heights has another occupant who is determined to disturb the delicate balance of the household. And, one day, he succeeds – there is a knock upon the door.
It is time for the attic to divulge its secrets Punch and Judy to tell their story the watch to start ticking and the apple to fall...
Apparently, the Wilderness was not always a Wilderness. And the Wilderness is not all that's out there now.
- June 2007
Alice: 'But I don't want to go among mad people'
Chesire Cat: 'Oh you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. Everyone's mad!'
Join us in New Hall's beautiful gardens to bring alive Lewis Carroll's fantastical masterpiece.
- January 2004
- October 2002
- November 2001
