- October 2015
And it was written: let there be a book tour. Tristram Shandy's sizzling autobiography, 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman', has just hit the shelves and the author is touring the country, wowing audiences with a theatrical extravaganza which captures the scandal, wit and wisdom of this instant classic. Morrissey's autobiography went straight to Penguin Classics; Tristram's got Oxford and Wordsworth as well. Although we tend not to talk about the Wordsworth edition.
Join us at the ADC, for four nights only, and revel in the sex, the scandal, the song, the dance, the love, the lies and that bit where he gets his thingy trapped in a sash window. This new adaptation of Laurence Sterne's hilarious and groundbreaking novel takes you on a poignant and compelling tour through some of the life and many of the opinions of Britain's finest Tristram.
Torquay is still reeling.
- October 2015
Getting into the boyband game can be difficult. Despite having one good singer, one with a regional accent, and one token Asian, Orlando, Haydn, and Yaseen haven't been able to crack it. So you'll have to join them for an hour of stand-up comedy instead.
The new show from the stars of "Smile", "Who Am I?", "Telly Visions", "Bafflesmash", "The Witt Club", "Picasso Stole the Mona Lisa", and countless Footlights and college smokers. No lip-synching. Guaranteed.
Previous praise for the performers:
"Simply sensational."
"Had the audience laughing from start to finish."
"A slimline Michael McIntyre."
"Thought provoking, exquisitely written, and doesn't scrimp on big laughs."
- October 2015
“What would the good do if evil did not exist? And what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?”
The Devil arrives in Stalinist Moscow. Pontius Pilate argues with Christ over the nature of human worth. And a woman goes to hell and back to save her lover.
This adaptation of Bulgakov’s violent, poetic and sprawling masterpiece stays true to the heart of the original: part diabolical satire, exposing the hypocrisy, greed and corruption of Moscow’s citizens, and part heart-rending love story, engaging with our most basic human instincts.
- October 2015
The original 1972 Broadway production of Stephen Schwartz (best known for his work on Wicked, Godspell, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Prince of Egypt) and Roger O. Hirson's 'Pippin' won five Tony Awards, and the 2013 Broadway revival won another four.
The story is told by a troupe of actors, led by the ‘Leading Player’, a mysterious figure who breaks the fourth wall and blurs the distinction between the world of fiction and reality. The troupe stages the story of Pippin, a young prince who is searching for his place in the world. Rather than following a linear structure, the show resembles a picaresque adventure-story, consisting of a number of fantastical episodes: Pippin goes to war with the Visigoths, murders his father, becomes a tyrant, flees to the countryside and falls in love.
Pippin contains a masterful score by Stephen Schwartz, with upbeat pop-inspired numbers that propel the story along with wit and energy, and many of its memorable songs, from Pippin’s soaring ballad Corner of the Sky to Berthe’s rousing (and audience-participatory) anthem No Time at All, have become established classics.
- 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."
- September 2015
A refreshingly honest and funny musical about making real connections in the city that never sleeps (but probably should at some point.) Ordinary Days tells the story of four young New Yorkers whose lives intersect as they search for fulfillment, happiness, love and cabs. Through a score of vibrant and memorable songs, their experiences ring startlingly true to life. Ordinary Days is an original musical for anyone who’s ever struggled to appreciate the simple things in a complex place. With equal doses of humor and poignancy, it celebrates how 8.3 million individual stories combine in unexpected ways to make New York City such a unique and extraordinary home.
- September 2015
A farcical comedy play that pays homage to Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit murder mysteries. But in this case, it’s very much whodidntdoit!
- September 2015
Princeton, a bright-eyed college graduate comes to New York City with big dreams and a tiny bank account. He soon discovers that the only neighbourhood in his price range is Avenue Q. Still, the neighbours seem nice. Together Princeton and his newfound friends struggle to find jobs, dates, and their ever-elusive purpose in life! Blending puppetry, musical theatre and comedy, this musical was a smash-hit on Broadway and in the West End.
- August 2015
castcambridge.com
“If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”
The stubborn, rebellious Katherina must consent to marriage, before her sickly sweet, and much desired younger sister Bianca is allowed to be a wife to one of her many suitors. While Petruchio attempts to “tame” the shrewish elder sister, the suitors battle to win the younger by disguising themselves all under the watchful eye of Baptista, their father.
Are the dreams of happy endings all that they were meant to be? We’ll see…
A play within a play, and high on music, dance and laughs, Shakespeare’s greatest comedy is full to the brim of plot twists and turns. Shakespeare’s use of scintillating dialogue, foolery and daring schemes are jam-packed into our two hour performance of Romance and Revenge!
Fifteen years since its first tour, CAST returns to the east coast of the USA in September 2015.
- July 2015
Telling the story of a Meddlesome Matchmaker, Hello Dolly is an irresistible story of the joy of living, sparkling with some of the best songs in musical theatre and one of the most iconic characters ever to grace the stage, Dolly Levi. With great songs such as ‘Put On Your Sunday Clothes’, ‘Before the Parade Passes By’ and of course the title song, this show is not to be missed! Featuring a live orchestra and a cast of trained musical theatre performers this show will be glittering with West End quality. After last year’s successful run of ‘Anything Goes’, KD Theatre makes a triumphant return with the hit Broadway musical ‘Hello Dolly.’
- 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.
- June 2015
Yaseen Kader ("Smile") and Ken Cheng ("The Mark Liu Story") present Joke Thieves: an hour of stand-up comedy with a twist. Ken and Yaseen have stolen a half hour of each other's material and placed their own spin on it. Is a stand up set too personal to succeed if someone else is performing it? Find out. You may have seen these performers in The Witt Club, Smile, Three White Guys and many college gigs around Cambridge.
Previous praise for performers:
"Brilliant quips" - TCS
"Master of metacomedy" - Tab
"thought-provoking, exquisitely written" - Varsity
"Artistic gold" - TCS
"overwhelmingly endearing and natural" - Varsity
- June 2015
Grizzly is a new stand-up show at the ADC on June 18th that will eat your face off and potentially amuse you. Featuring badass young whippersnappers Jamie Armitage, Eleanor Colville, Tom Fairbairn, Rob Oldham and Orlando Gibbs. This show is for one night only so it's the hottest ticket in town - don't miss out on the funny.
- June 2015
A crack team of Cambridge comedians with a combined Twitter following of more than 705 has arrived to help (s)wipe away those tears and make those lols and roflmaos go viral.
Six acts. One night. Get ready for laughtr.
comedy #goodtimes #funinthesun
- June 2015
Discontent has nothing left to do but soliloquise. He is vaguely Elizabethan. Or is he vaguely science fiction? In a world of embroidered icebergs, gun-hoy harpoons, and chopping blocks bleached to high heaven, only one thing is certain: it would be very terrible to be a radiator.
Confused? Good.
- June 2015
THE DRYDEN SOCIETY and THE SHADWELL SOCIETY PRESENT 'SUPER'.
The Justice League of North West and Central London, Potters Bar and Cuffley want to use their newfound superpowers to 'fight crime and s**t'. The Siblinghood of Evil want to use theirs for 'maximum personal gain, minimum collateral damage'. The problem is, they unknowingly book the same room for their meetings. Posing respectively as a karate class and an urban dance team, members of the two groups meet, socialise and even date, all the while unaware that once they put their masks on, they're bitterest of enemies.
- June 2015
Is being shite? Do you find it unbearable?
Once in every generation a man who has been at Cambridge for slightly too long performs an hour of stand-up about what is happening to his life.
This is that hour. Milo Edwards is that man.
About Milo Edwards:
In 22 years of existence Milo has achieved a great many things, including but not limited to his 50m Breaststroke badge, and after four years at Cambridge strewn with Footlights performances, extremely disappointed lovers of various species, a sacking from a well-known publication and a failed bid to become CUSU president - it's time to take stock and answer the big questions, e.g.
Who is he really?
Why doesn't he have a graduate job?
What is in Sunny Delight?
and some more.
Come for the comedy, stay for the seating.
Previous praise for Milo Edwards:
“Fantastic… had me in hysterics” – TCS
“A total crowd-pleaser” – The Tab
“Well-judged and intelligent” – Varsity
'Effortlessly funny' - The Tab
'Needlessly rude and uncooperative' - Patrick Brooks, former Editor-in-Chief, The Tab Cambridge
- June 2015
The Footlights International Tour Show is the biggest show of the year. Join ‘the most renowned sketch troupe of them all’ (The Independent) as they embark on another exceptional world tour, performing to over twenty thousand people across two continents. This year expanding the tour to include New Orleans, Las Vegas, Canada and the Cayman Islands, alongside its usual trips to Edinburgh, both coasts of the USA, London, and Cambridge. Don’t miss your chance to see the latest on offer from the group that launched many of the greatest names in comedy, including Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, David Mitchell, Richard Ayoade, John Oliver and Simon Bird.
www.footlightsontour.co.uk
- May 2015
This is a happy day. Regardless of certain extraneous factors, today will be a happy day - at least that's what Winnie wants. Buried up to her waist in the ground and with laconic and difficult husband Willie to deal with, Winnie just wants to have a happy day between the waking bell and the sleeping bell. Armed with her life in a bag and a head full of thoughts and memories and questions about cricked necks and hogs, join Winnie for two days in her search for Happy Days.
Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. One of Ireland's most celebrated dramatists, he was elected Saoi of the Aosdána in 1984. He wrote in both English and French - this production will be in English.
- 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.
- May 2015
‘It’s hard to find your way, when you have no voice to guide you.’
Set in a Catholic boarding school, BARE is the story of Jason and Peter, whose forbidden love causes them to ask questions both of themselves and their god.
With graduation approaching, and the added pressure of the school’s production of Romeo and Juliet, these questions are getting more insistent.
When religion makes up so much of who you are, how do you continue when the world you thought you understood has fallen apart around you?
Featuring some of the most beautiful music written in the last fifty years, often working with Shakespeare’s original language, BARE is a portrayal of love, loss and identity in a world that is quick to judge.
- May 2015
'The future of new opera' - The Independent
'Profoundly funny and original' - What's On Stage
In 1985, Melvyn Bragg interviewed Francis Bacon for the South Bank Show. They chatted about art and life and then got drunk on TV.
In 2012, the contemporary composer Stephen Crowe came along and set this interview to music. The result is a brilliantly absurd, ridiculous, comic experimental short opera.
Join us as we venture into the studio and into the mind of one of the 20th century's greatest artists (and drag Melvyn Bragg along on the way).
- May 2015
- May 2015
"Banish not him thy Harry’s company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.” (II.iv)
Henry IV, consumed by guilt for the rebellion by which he seized the throne, faces an uprising of his own. His enemies are uniting to challenge his rule, yet all the while his heir Hal shuns his royal responsibilities, instead keeping company with the apparent miscreants of Eastcheap: drunkards, thieves and a certain John Falstaff. Caught between two worlds and two domineering paternal influences, Hal must decide between fulfilling his birthright and a life of heady merriment.
A traditional playhouse setting, complete with live band, will be the backdrop to this interplay of political intrigue and boisterous comedy: an exploration of identity against the forces of responsibility and revelry.
- April–May 2015
"She touched me all over, just like I'd touched the body of Our Lord."
Manon needs God to speak to her. Sandra needs to fuck somebody.
This fearless and passionate play touches on the lives of two women obsessed. Manon is chaste, lonely and desperate for divine release. Sandra is a transvestite, driven by a primal desire for sexual gratification that drifts into religious ecstasy.
Each untouched, their stories intertwine. One can’t stop touching her wine red rosary beads, the other wants to paint on her lover’s body with green lipstick. Both are outcasts. Both are frantic. Both want to feel someone else’s skin against theirs.
Translated from Québécois French by John Van Burek, this play is a snapshot of passion and desperation, in the form of interweaving monologues. Welcome to the stage the sacred and the damned.
- April–May 2015
Set in the depths of rural Spain in the 1920s, and based on actual events, Blood Wedding is the tale of brutal family feuds, marriage, murder, and vengeance. This production aims to capture the period, whilst playing with the magic and fantastical elements of the final act. With a mixture of live and recorded music, physical theatre, and dance this show is bound to impress and delight, whilst capturing the magic of Lorca's writing.
- April 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
The Footlights present Warp Factor by Oliver Taylor as the winner of this year's Harry Porter Prize (set up in 2003 in honour of the late Dr Harry Porter, Footlights' long-term Senior Archivist).
Warp Factor is a farcical sci-fi adventure that provides a conclusive explanation of the nature of the universe and god. Featuring a man with 500 personalities downloaded into his mind, a commander so incompetent that he extends his cryogenic hyper-sleep 3 weeks by pressing “snooze”, and a Feminid from the planet Vulvox where everyone chooses their gender (and where everyone is hence female) all taking part in the most important mission in human history, Warp Factor is the most thrilling interstellar action comedy on this plane of dimensional existence.
The show was recorded, and can be viewed at this URL: https://youtu.be/It0kGJCRWBM
- March 2015
“How do you document real life, when real life’s getting more like fiction every day?”
Coming to the ADC Theatre this March, “Rent" is the smash-hit rock musical which follows the lives of people struggling to live as artists in New York City.
Unafraid to be honest in its portrayal of the hardships that face people, Rent does not shy away from subjects of controversy: alongside the struggling film maker, an angry performance artist and issues of sexuality and depression we are faced with those living with AIDS, addiction and sordid pasts that threaten their current happiness.
Yet, with its contagious energy and thirst for life, Rent promises to bring the audience to its feet with high tempo numbers such as "La Vie Boheme" and “Rent” as well as familiar favourites such as "Seasons of Love"
The biggest, coolest and most heart-wrenching show of the season, make sure you don’t miss out on Rent!
“Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?”
- March 2015
The Marlowe Showcase 2015 will be a chance for graduating actors to perform a series of monologues and duologues to an audience of industry professionals including casting directors and agents.
London tickets available here: http://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/whats-on/the-marlowe-showcase-2015/
- March 2015
Roll up! Roll up! Cirque De L’Extraordinaire is a marvel for all to see; a sketch show set in a circus!
Sam, Theo, Jordan and Guy are four sketch writers who have spent years training and dreaming. Now, in an attempt to broaden their horizons, they endeavour to accomplish the most daring and audacious extravaganza Cambridge has ever seen.
But can they really create and perform in their own circus? No! At the last minute they back out and resort to doing an hour of sketch comedy, but the circus performers aren’t happy. As they say in the circus, ‘the show must go on!’
Clare Actors present a new hour of comedy and circus from the team that have collectively brought you Pelican, Dystopia: The Musical, STIFF! (The Footlights Harry Porter Prize WInner 2014), Amygdala Wonderland, Sunset Eternal, The Double, The Canon, Female Personality of the Year, Hear Hear, Tamburlaine the Great, Bafflesmash, Who Am I?, Jolly Good, Beauty Spots, Laughing Fitz, numerous Footlights smokers, and many more.
Previous praise:
Varsity - "Highly original and truly hilarious"
The Tab - "The epitome of bizarre hilarity and joyous absurdity"
TCS - "Has half the audience dancing and the rest laughing"
- March 2015
Cambridge Footlights are getting together with their Friends, the Leeds Tealights and the Bristol Revunions. A bit like a Smoker, there might be some songs, some sketches, some stand-up. Not like a Smoker, there will be people you won’t see in Cambridge any other time this year.
For one night only, they’re doing a show together in the spirit of collaboration and mutual congratulation. Maybe tinged with the spirit of competition.
This show won’t come again. Not only is all the material original, but the getting together will only come round once a year. The Tealights might have a new committee by then! The Revunions might have been disbanded following a court order!
Whatever the coming year has in store for the Footlights and their Friends, you won’t see a show like this any old night, so book some tickets early and bring your Friends.
- March 2015
Set somewhere between hope, glory and the endless wasteland, hanging on to the dregs of a now pixelated American Dream, is Phyllis Nagy’s ludicrously epic ‘The Strip’.
Having premiered at The Royal Court in 1995, the play is even more relevant now than ever, with the exponential growth of our addiction to celebrity and an everlasting aspiration for destiny. With its ludicrously interwoven plot lines, 10 characters chase their wants and hopes across the transatlantic wilderness for forgotten clichés of love and success. Will they make it before the impending solar eclipse?
Nagy’s writing takes us on a terrific journey with complete absurdity, bitingly bitter humour and bleak resonance in a production that delights and rockets towards The Strip’s kaleidoscopic end.
- February 2015
The Cambridge University University Musical Theatre Society presents its annual Gala night - a one night extravaganza, complete with solos, chorus numbers, choreography, a full band and a good sprinkling of glitz and glamour. The Gala is guaranteed to be an evening of outrageous fun!
