- October 2006
“Pleasure and self-destruction: the perfect poison.”
In a bustling and blinding metropolis, four strangers meet and fall in love. Dan writes obituaries. Anna is a recently divorced photographer. Larry is a lustful dermatologist. Alice is a self-described waif, working as a stripper.
A brutal anatomy of modern love, 'Closer' follows these characters through four years of romantic turmoil and charts their restless hunt and constant failure to find intimacy. Patrick Marber’s devastatingly sharp dialogue creates an emotional minefield, in which truth and illusion are interchangeable; and in which love can hurt and scar, as much as it can console and heal.
Come and recognise yourselves in these strikingly real relationships as they are injected into an oppressive cityscape of neon, couture and projection.
Sexual conflicts, fluid identities, distilled memories: all laid bare on the ADC stage, in this stylish and seductive update of one of the most provocative plays of the 1990s: a 'candid, scathing, very modern view of the sex war' (Guardian).
www.closeknit.co.uk
- August 2006
If music be the food of love, play on...
Viola is dressed as a boy and is in love with Duke Orsino, but Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia. Olivia's servant Malvoilio thinks Olivia is in love wth him, but Olivia is really in love with Viola...or is that Viola's twin brother Sebastian? Only the fool Feste knows the truth!
Beneath the surface of this sparkling and hilarious comedy lie life's darkest and most terrible truths. Under their laughter the inhabitants of Illyria are plagued by loneliness, grief, revenge, humiliation, alcoholism, and madness. This greatest and darkest of Shakespeare's comedies reminds us that in the tragi-comedy of life we must capture whatever fleeting happiness we can...
- July 2006
Anna has come to visit her old flatmate Kate and relive their carefree youth of twenty years before. But nostalgia turns to conflict and she is soon at war with Kate's filmmaker husband Deeley over his wife's affections. As Anna and Deeley battle using vintage songs and films as ammunition it becomes clear that no amount of duelling will win Kate over - it only serves to demonstrate the fragility of their happy memories and expose the rottenness of their present lives.
Nobel prizewinner Harold Pinter is at the height of his powers here. By turns lyrical and menacing, this play explores both the light and the dark side of looking back to Old Times.
- July 2006
Rape, murder, revenge and honour in the wars of 15th Century Spain. The village of Fuente Ovejuna is being used as a base for a military expedition. The commander abuses his power and position, especially with the peasant women. Eventually he abducts and assaults the mayor's daughter on her wedding night. The villagers are outraged and take action, but their methods and results are far from predictable... The 2006 Town and Gown production, supported by the Amatuer Dramatic Club, will see Steven Siddall, director of 15 Arts Theatre productions, working with actors and technicians drawn both from the University and the local talent. A fantastic opportunity for students to collaborate with older and more experienced practioners, 'Fuente Ovejuna' will be a powerful and visually exciting production.
- June 2006
No scripts. No rehearsals. No Michael Aspel. Imagine your whole life flashing before you. Now rewind, and imagine it again, only improvised on the spot by Cambridge's freshest comedy talent. Taking inspiration from members of the audience, Improvised Comedy Ents, described by TCS as "the future faces of Britain's comedy elite", will re-imagine the life of one character through the medium of television. Prepare to relive your childhood TV nostalgia and experience a trip through pop-culture like you've never seen before. We may not have Michael Aspel, but for one lucky person, This Is Your ICE.
- June 2006
Prometheus is a rebel from the Gods, scorned by the new King Zeus and sent to the outer ends of the earth to be wracked by pain for eternity. His only sin, that he loved mankind too much. Daring to stealing from the Gods' own hearth, Prometheus takes a single flame of holy fire and flees with it to earth. From that single light human civilisation as we know it began. Prometheus Bound is the story of his rebellion, his imprisonment, and the future saviour who will set him free.
Returning to the beginning of time, Close Knit Productions present their dynamic, artistically ambitious and exciting take on Aeschylus's tragic masterpiece. www.closeknit.co.uk
- June 2006
NO SCRIPTS. NO REHEARSALS. NO DODGY SEQUELS. Join Improvised Comedy Ents for a fast-paced, unpredictable and riotous evening of improvised sketches. Everything is based on suggestions from you, the audience, and made up on the spot! A hilarous night out and the perfect way to forget the horrors of exams. NO NONSENSE - JUST COMEDY.
- June 2006
The Cambridge Footlights are the world-famous comedy troupe who first aired the talents of some of the foremost British comedians and actors of this century. The Tour Show is one of the most eagerly anticipated productions in the Cambridge theatrical calendar as well as at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Tour Show attracts the best of Cambridge's infamous comedy and considerable technical talent.
- May–June 2006
The Who's rock opera, famously immortalised in film by Ken Russell in 1975, is performed by one of the UK's leading young people's theatre companies.
Having witnessed a violent murder, post traumatic stress disorder renders four year old Tommy deaf, dumb and blind. His subsequent journey through "his strange vibration land" takes him through rites of passage at the hands of the Acid Queen, his perverted Uncle Ernie and his vicious Cousin Kevin. Loved and rejected, Tommy's personal redemption is found in his mastery of pin ball and the "Pin Ball Wizard" is propelled to a status of astonishing celebrity and hailed as a redeemer of a people desperately in search of a meaningful hero. Crashing though the confines of political correctness and exposing an idolatrous and dysfunctional society, Tommy's message has increased in intensity and relevance since its inception.
The Who's legendary music tells a tale of inhumanity and sufferance. It questions our faith and challenges our ability to take responsibility for our own thoughts, words and deeds.
Includes rock classics such as Pinball Wizard and Acid Queen made famous by Elton John and Tina Turner in Russell's subversive film.
- May 2006
"Torture. Barbarism of all sorts. Starvation. Chemical warfare. Public hangings. Mutilation of children. Raping of mothers. Raping of daughters. Raping of brothers and fathers. Executions of entire families. Executions of entire generations of families. Amputation of private organs. Decapitation. Disembowelment. Dismemberment. Disinternment. Eradication of wildlife. You name it... It's a question of destiny..."
Sam Shepard's 'States of Shock' charts a mealtime encounter between an army veteran, his mutilated companion - Stubbs - and two civilians. With the invention of death, anti-state blasphemy, and the threat of a good solid spanking, this lacerated encounter leaves no stone unturned and no turn unstoned.
Is aggression the only answer? Without the enemy we're nothing. Soldiers aren't toys, are they? The situation has to be faced! If you keep thinking of home, you won't slip into doubt.
- May 2006
- May 2006
- May 2006
How many times have you locked eyes with someone across a room, and wondered 'what if?' In that moment, you may live a hundred relationships, but in the end, it's just a fantasy. These two plays examine the boundary between that fantasy and reality, asking the audience to join the fictional lovers in suspending all belief and going for an emotional roller coaster ride. While 'The Yalta Game' warns how dangerous it can be to blur the boundaries of love too much, 'Sure Thing' shows that there could be someone out there for all of us. Love is a dangerous emotion, leading us to taking risks that we would never normally take. Not every story can have a happy ending, can it?
- May 2006
1789; the British government strikes upon a novel solution to prison overcrowding - ship the problem to the underside of the world…
True patriots all; for be it understood, We left our country for our country's good
Supplies are running short; theft, prostitution and violence are rife. Whispers of mutiny abound in the ranks of criminals and gaolers alike. A young lieutenant, vying for the governor's attention, has an idea. With only two copies of the script, rehearsals for the first Australian performance of “The Recruiting Officer” commence...
And none will doubt but that our emigration, Has prov'd most useful to the British nation.
Winner of the 1988 Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award and based on the novel by Thomas Kennealy (author of Schindler's List), Our Country's Good is a modern classic. At once poignant, funny and uplifting, this is theatre at its best.
'Rarely has the redemptive, transcendental power of theatre been argued with such eloquence and passion.' Independent
www.ourcountrysgood.co.uk
- May 2006
Like slapstick, do you? Like violence? Like laughing, do you, at violence? Like cakes?
Whether or not the above is applicable to you, you cannot fail to laugh, cry and vomit your way through this deliciously dark capering comedy.
Some of Britain's best-loved (puppet) characters spring to bloody life in this jarring, ludicrous romp, based on the “well-loved“ children‘s puppet show. We follow our peevish protagonist Punch as he embarks on a whirlwind adventure featuring the most memorable whores, doctors and members of the constabulary you’re ever likely to see on the ADC stage. Cakes abound, but do not be deceived: riotous hilarity gradually descends into a macabre and unsettling resolution - or IRRESOLUTION?
ROAR at the japes! BECOME INCAPACITATED by the mirth! QUAKE at the horror! STROKE YOUR JAW CONTEMPLATIVELY at the poignancy! TALK to each other afterwards!
- May 2006
"Great days, Zurich during the war. Refugees, spies, exiles, painters, poets, writers, radicals of all kinds. I knew them all."
Henry Carr is an ordinary old man with a very unordinary past. With his mind still in the neutral hideaway of World War I Switzerland, he is the 'other one' from The Importance of Being Earnest. Taking refuge from the war, he meets many historical figures including Lenin, Joyce and Tzara, whom he recollects in a number of witty and comical memories.
Join us as Henry Carr shares his past in a comedy in which you can never tell where memories end and imagination begins. Limericks and literary allusions abound, Travesties is a combination of political history, artistic debate and spoof reminiscence. Misunderstood memories, or just the wondering thoughts of an old man?
"Zurich, by one who was there..."
www.travesties.clareactors.com
- March 2006
Following on from the success of his debut one-man comedy creation Back In Town Again: - "Waltzing out of town; Nick Mohammed brings a whole new set of characters together in an early preview of The Forer Factor.
"Exceptionally sharp comedy from a frankly brilliant performer…Astonishing". John Park - Fringe Report
"Nick Mohammed is a comedy Columbus, finding land that no-one's found before…Go see this awesome, exciting talent before he gets on the telly". Jane Buffham - Three Weeks
"A brilliantly produced piece of comedy which deserves to be seen". Susan Turnbull - Comedy Lounge
"Without doubt a star of the future". Sureka Fernando - Cambridge Evening News
- March 2006
COMEDY. FRIENDSHIP. LOVE. BETRAYAL. WRITING. OPERA.
A park bench. Hugh tells Henry his life story. Henry joins in.
Our Rossini-obsessed hero has rather too strong an imagination, and as he takes his new friend through his emotional past, things begin to get out of control... There's an over-eager waitress, a Wild West shoot-out, a villainous Mr Darcy, a wedding and an aria. The Harry Porter prize is the annual Footlights award for best new comic writing. Come and be a part of this exciting production that promises laughs, love and a few surprise twists...
"fresh and lively and entertaining" (Michael Frayn, judge)
- March 2006
'Some enchanted evening' the ADC will be transformed into an island paradise.
Sailors, palm trees, beautiful music, show-stopping numbers and shrunken heads! South Pacific tells two parallel love stories threatened by the dangers of prejudice and war. Through Rodgers' beautiful music and Hammersteins' thoughful libretto, the audience will be spell-bound.
- March 2006
The Medics Revue returns with a fresh faced cast made up of Cambridge undergraduate medics and vets for another dose of entirely non-medical comedy. Following on from last year's Edinburgh Fringe show Beyond All Reasonable Gout and the sell out production at the ADC Theatre Pirates of the Perineum, this year's show will deliver sketch based comedy taking you from current affairs to the surreal with almost everything in between.
The Revue has a distinguished history at the ADC Theatre of producing slick, professional and down-right hilarious comedy and this year's cast promises nothing less. You'll find it's just what the doctor ordered.
- March 2006
For one night only some of the lesser-known and rarely-performed works of Beckett's considerable canon appear on the ADC stage.
In this collection of eight short pieces which question the very nature of theatre, Beckett foregrounds the invomprehensibility of the world and other people, disables communication and smothers emotion. Thought-provoking, unsettling and often hilarious, by disorientating both the audience and his characters Beckett conjures a theatrical experience which is not to be missed. Offering a rare insight into some of the most experimental work of one of the twentieth century's literary giants, this promises to engage both Beckett devotees and virgins alike.
- March 2006
Life. Death. Love. Honour. War.
War has raged for nine years. Thousands have died. But there is no end in sight. The most beautiful woman in the world lies behind the great walled city of the Trojans, beyond the reach of her Greek husband. Getting her back may once have been the aim of this war, but now all sense is lost in the ongoing mass of bloodshed. Fathers, brothers, sons, husbands - war is indiscriminate in its victims. Only two men offer hope for an end - Hector and Achilles. But is a peaceful end ever an option when love and honour are at stake?
- March 2006
Eddy is stuck in a metropolis of piss-artists, violence and greasy toast. He escapes. Gets married, gets himself sorted. But he’s only gone and bedding his ol’ mum and killed his Dad. He’s screwed. But what can you do? Berkoff’s reworking of the Oedipus myth graphically smacks you around in a cutting-comic journey through central London with melodies of the lost but never forgotten and ensemble acting of the first order. A seaside slap-stick façade of tragic hubris and grief through the broken lens of the oppressed working classes of Thatcher’s 1980s Britain. It’s a cesspit. Right?
- February–March 2006
The Circus is in town. For one week only, hear the freaks speak, see the magician saw people, smell the lions and watch the clowns drown in a bucket of whitewash or something. Hurry. Before it's too late, before it's all closed down for health and safety reasons.
The Footlights Spring Revue is one of the most inventive and consistently hilarious comedy shows of the Cambridge year. And this one is going to top the lot. In the Big Top.
Watch the trailer at www.seethecircus.com
- February 2006
A new adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s cult novel, The Third Policeman, brings devilish policemen, human velocipedes and eccentric philosophy to the stage. Follow our one-legged hero as he limps his way through a surreal world of guilt, gags and rap-trap pedals. If you’ve killed a man with a spade or fallen in love with a bicycle, this is the show for you. Sinister smiles, weird words, macabre melodies, curious characters and oiful Oirish!
MURDER mystery. Hilarious COMEDY. Romantic LOVE. Village POLICEMEN and lots of BICYCLES.
- February 2006
Improvised Comedy Ents, the university's premier improv group, return for two more of their fast-paced, fully improvised and somewhat inexplicable shows.
On 24 January, ICE present Whose Ice was it Anyhow?, in which the highly trained ICE team will present a packed hour of sketches and games driven by audience suggestions. Then on 21 February, come and see Lights, Camera, Improv!, in which the ICE team will improvise a full hour-long disaster movie right in front of your very eyes!
'ICE may not have had a script, a plan or even a clue, but they definitely had one thing on their side - lots and ltos of laughter.' - TCS
- February 2006
'The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?'
Vienna of the retrofuture: a sleazy, pilled-up world of transsexuals and large-scale deviance. A young man is sentenced to death for sexual indiscretion and when his fundamentalist sister goes to plead for his life she is drawn into a lethal game of sexual cat and mouse with the Duke's corrupt deputy. Meanwhile the Duke, in the apparel of a monk, visits the overflowing prisons. Heads roll and hips swing; genders bend and dogs howl. The corridors of power are splashed with blood, the streets with trash, and the prisons with vomit.
Shakespeare's funniest and most problematic comedy is given a facelift, squeezed into stilettos, and thrust onto the ADC stage in an awe-inspiring tidal wave of karaoke, pornography, electro-punk, and singing nuns.
Please visit http://www.measureformeasure.org.uk
OPENING NIGHT OFFER: 2 for 1 drinks for cross-dressing customers!
- February 2006
Will someone be my baby?
An age famous for its vibrancy, liberation and free love. But in a lonely corner of England a group of young women struggle desperately to live with a terrible secret. A forgotten few isolated from a society that’s ashamed of them.
'Be my baby' is the tragically real story of young illegitimate mothers exiled by their own families who were simply too scared of what other people would think.
Poignant yet witty, 'Be my baby' exposes the unforgiving nature of a time not so long ago. The hope and determination of a group of girls convinced that they can never hide from the truth, just looking for a way to be happy.
- February 2006
- February 2006
For one night only, the ADC Bar will be filled with the voices of the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society.
Fast becoming one of the most important student musical theatre societies in the country, CUMTS has consistently wowed audiences with productions at the ADC Theatre, at the Cambridge Arts Theatre and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Recent successes include Merrily We Roll Along (2004), Me and My Girl (2005) and The Threepenny Opera (2005).
Accompanied by a live band, members will be performing numbers from hit West End and Broadway shows right across the musical theatre spectrum: from Sondheim to Cole Porter, and from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Jason Robert Brown. Join Cambridge's finest performers in the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of the ADC Bar for a perfect evening's entertainment.
- February 2006
THREE PLAYS. THREE SECRETS. THREE LINES CROSSED. Neil Labute's acclaimed and demanding short play cycle presents three stories, unconnected in character, place or plot, but somehow irrepressibly linked. Three people have three secrets that they have told nobody. Tonight, all they want to do is tell you.
bash: 1 (v) to hit; = "he bashed him with a stick" / 2 (n) A party, esp a good exciting one: "Her little soirée turned into a real bash" / 3 (n) An attempt; = "come on then, let's give it a bash"
www.whatsyoursecret.co.uk
- February 2006
Four women present four pieces of drama, 'A Woman Alone', 'The Same Old Story', 'The Rape', 'The Whore in the Madhouse': comic, grotesque and tragic, all triumphantly attesting to the power of female sexuality, and individuality.
This exploration of Abuse, Desire, Harassment, and Oppression will take the audience to extremes of laughter, fear, pain, hope and despair.
A housewife who 'has everything any woman could want' evaluates her roles as wife, mother, mistress, object of desire, slave. And woman. A woman falls pregnant to her left-wing, intellectual lover, whom she cannot persuade to be considerate of her. A young woman is abducted, tortured and raped by three men in a van, and is dumped in a park. A prostitute relates her story to a psychiatrist interviewing her in a mental institution.
- February 2006
The genesis of a Cambridge spy is as thrilling, disturbing and moving as you probably never imagined. Forget BBC teatime dramas. This play gives us an arrestingly intimate vision of those infamous figures as teenage boys, with all their wit, passion, swagger, sex drive and dreams. Julian Mitchell's play magnifies the furious drama of any adolescence into a disarming social and political diatribe. He illuminates the absurdity and barbarity of a 1930s public education, showing us the scandalous consequences of such an upbringing, not only for these boys, but for our country.
- February 2006
"You have an agenda, we have an agenda. I am not interested in your feelings or your motivation, but your actions"
After receiving a failing mid-term grade, a university student confronts her teacher in his office. After the meeting becomes physical, she files a complaint of sexual harassment against her professor.
David Mamet's explosive 1993 play arrives on the ADC stage in a bold torrent of searing eloquence. Set in a university context it questions everything about the higher education system. It pulls its audience this way and that, leaving them feeling somewhat violated. Its first production did just that, causing a sensation and dividing couples over its depiction of political correctness gone haywire. By using time distortion, this production promises to be truly original and highly provocative. With its violently paced and poetic dialogue, Oleanna will certainly have a hard hitting effect on you. Not a word is redundant, every moment is tense, and engaging. It is always disturbing, frequently menacing but only at the end breaks into violence. The control is immaculate. The ringing of a phone becomes a battle cry, words become weapons, and an ordinary meeting becomes a war of wills and ideologies. Watch these two familiar characters tread a sexual minefield. Anything may trigger it off.
- January–February 2006
“What’s the point in revolution without general copulation?” howl the inmates of the insane asylum of Charenton. Narcoleptics, nymphomaniacs, and narcissists, are acting out the persecution and death of the revolutionary leader Marat under the direction of the infamous Marquis de Sade; depravity, sexual perversion, violence, song and dance are the order of the day.
- January 2006
Set in contemporary Northern Ireland, this bold new play uses the Antigone myth to respond to the McCartney murder.
Two young men perform a suicide pact. The deaths act as a catalyst, revealing familial hatred and resentment, forcing the characters to evaluate their existence within a social and political climate of mistrust. The varying hurts of the characters are slowly revealed and the dead will not sleep. A serenading chorus, old drunken whores, 'heavies' and a pizza deliveryman voice just some of the action.
Ismene is a new play by recent Cambridge graduate Stacey Gregg, written in response to a small but growing tradition of Greek Tragedy appropriated by Irish writers. The piece addresses problems of contemporary society in Northern Ireland, whilst fusing a literary tradition that evokes the Ancient Greeks for our sense of 'Tragedy'. This play is challenging, forcing you to look at events taking place now and see them in the bloody light of supposed 'myths' and 'stories'. Tragedy is not such an ancient concept.
