- February 2010
Fabulously rich and famously generous, Timon is a much-loved fixture of Athenian society. But when his lavish spending lands him deep in debt and he is forced to seek the aid of his companions, he discovers that their friendship extends only as far as his credit line. Furious, disillusioned, and impoverished, Timon curses mankind and flees Athens, becoming a seaside hermit and avoiding all human contact until one day he discovers buried treasure and suddenly finds himself the object of attention once again.
- February 2010
Will is a man. And a magician. A professional magician; an amateur man. This is Presto: a play in which several things happen. Once. Presented as a maelstrom of film and live action, Presto promises an evening of magic, comedy and fear from a 'show-stealing' talent (Varsity).
- February 2010
" Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't "
When witches prophesy that Macbeth will be king, the choice lies in his hands: to follow his forceful wife and his own ambition, or to shun the evil deeds that he knows he must perform. As Scotland spirals further and further into wild degradation, where force fights force and purity is weak, Macbeth battles with himself, his friends, and what goodness remains around him while his world spins ever further into a chaos of bloodshed and madness.
- February 2010
Joe Orton's most satirical and autobiographical comedy follows Buchanan through his many trials and tribulations from his retirement to his death. Already struggling to cope with the realisation that his life reads like a list of "almost"s and "if only"s, Buchanan is foiled at every turn by the meddling Mrs Vealfoy, a company representative, who naturally considers the enhancement of Buchanan's superficial happiness her personal responsibility. The poor, world-weary Buchanan, trying to support his well-meaning but generally useless (and only recently rediscovered) family, is the man nobody wants to become: The Good and Faithful Servant.
- February 2010
‘Funny bloke, Charles. He’s a lovely man. One of the best. But you know the only trouble is he’s a nutter.’
Charles runs a bar in South London. He’s a man’s man, handsome, charismatic. But something’s not right: his wife is dead, grief isn’t easy and there’s a lot of rum that needs drinking. Science can’t help him. Religion can’t help him. Can Lucy, his new barmaid? Perhaps. But should he really be teaching a livewire like her to defend herself with a baseball bat? It can only be a matter of time before something, or someone, gets broken. Join these two hotheads on their erratic course through a loveless London full of shadowy characters and dodgy secrets, soaked in booze, violence and each other.
- January 2010
Rollo is a homeless millionaire. Le Douze Quatorze is a hopeless gambler. Missy and Clayton are incompatible. But widower Beethoven is on a labour of love...
These misplaced characters have to choose a new direction as they are diverted and diverting in their chance encounters. Moving on or staying put, clinging on to something or leaving it behind: they all must decide what to do next.
Quirky and fresh, Yo, My Man is a comedy about jazz, disappointment, self-delusion, and different kinds of hope.
- December 2009
An absurdist classic. A professor awaits a fresh pupil's arrival, brushing off the maid's warnings of the dark things that may come of yet another lesson. The pupil arrives, eager to learn, seemingly promising and bright, but as the pupil's limitations become evident, the professor's frustration grows, and the day's lesson takes its foreshadowed, perilous turn. This potent "comic drama" has the power to frighten and delight as only absurdist plays can. A cocktail of violence - psychological and physical - and comedy that ranges from screwball to inky black, the play is as fresh and relevant today as at its premier nearly 60 years ago.
- November 2009
1980s London. Four friends share a flat in Earl’s Court. The prospect of the property boom, however, brings the threat of separation, renovation and re-evaluation. While their landlord’s offer to buy out his tenants leaves Sherry giddy with excitement, Marion consults her biological clock, Paul becomes a DIY demon and Howard wishes everyone would just shut the hell up! Communal domestic ‘bliss’ is stretched to breaking point in a world where real estate affects individuals and property values are placed on friendship. Property isn’t the only thing at stake.
- November 2009
Scott McPherson’s dark and mordantly funny comedy is about one woman’s commitment to caring for her family first, even in the face of personal tragedy. Nominated in 1992 for the Drama Desk Awards Outstanding New Play, the title character, who is never seen onstage, has been dying for 20 years. Bessie, Marvin’s daughter, has been taking care of Marvin and her aunt all her adult life, and she will continue to do so until they drop or she does.
Her relationship with her sister is a different story...Estranged since their father's first stroke some 17 years earlier, Lee and Bessie lead separate lives in separate states. Lee has two sons, neither of whom are particularly normal: Charlie always has his nose in a book, and (in a more extreme example of abnormality) Hank was committed to a psychiatric hospital after setting fire to the house. Early in the play we discover Bessie has leukaemia and is in need of a bone marrow transplant. This necessitates a call to her sister...The impact that Bessie has on Lee and her sons, particularly Hank, is the underlying story of Marvin’s Room.
- November 2009
World War II is over and all over Europe, people are looking for their lost relatives. Elma has no memory. She is singing nightly in a seedy Berlin nightclub, going home to Salter and Mop, two people who are in love with her. She is being followed: a mysterious man tells her she is the missing wife of an Italian aristocrat. But Salter won't give her up without a fight...
- November 2009
Six of Cambridge's most punctual comedians unite for an evening of madcap hilarity, indescribable mirth and unbridled leisurefun. Have a shower, put some clothes on and see this term's most good sketch show.
- November 2009
For the Revd Pringle his reputation for honesty and piety is everything. To uphold it he would resort to deception, intimidation and even murder. But when the one thing better than killing your wife is making everyone think you have, the line between reality and public image begins to blur and morality goes entirely out of the window.
Orton's black comedy probes the shadowy world of cults, coal cellars and cake tins and finds some surprising contents.
How far would you go to keep up your reputation?
- October 2009
This will be the amateur premiere of Stenham's electrifying first play, written when she was just 19.
Mia is about to be kicked out of boarding school for sticking mummy's Valium down a younger girl's throat. Henry has dropped out of school in a desperate attempt to hold his screwed up family together. Martha will control and ruin both of their lives. Martha is addicted to prescription medication. Martha is their mother.
In his review in The Telegraph, Charles Spencer called THAT FACE "one of the most astonishing debuts I have seen in more than 30 years of theatre reviewing." This production, the first in the U.K. since its premiere at the Royal Court in 2007, will take place in an explosive world of fluorescent light, using the intimate confines of the Playroom to create the claustrophobic environment of Martha's squalid bedroom.
- October 2009
Judith leaves her ex-boyfriend a desperate message on his answer-phone saying that she is not coping with their break-up, that she has brought some razor blades and some henna in order to either slash her wrists or dye her hair and she might be pregnant. However, it is his new partner, Ros, who hears the message and it is she that rushes to Judith's bedsit. An evening of emotion, combined with subtle humour, ensues that will conclude with the two women, despite their differences and rivalry, finding friendship and gaining something positive from each other.
- June 2009
The city of Thebes is trying to recover after a gruesome civil war, and the new-crowned king Creon will do everything to keep the state under control. But there is one person that will not conform. Drawn by the majesty of death and her uncompromising devotion to her family, Antigone buries her brother. Some call what follows a deserved punishment; others a path to glory. But who is right? And are the living always more fortunate than the dead? Seamus Heaney’s translation of Sophocles’ tragedy breathes new life into one of the most compelling dramatic pieces of all time.
- June 2009
In an airless basement room, two hitmen await details of their next assignment. They’re a team from way back, but today something has disturbed their normally efficient routine. Unseen forces bear down on them in their precarious and darkly funny world. While increasingly bizarre orders keep arriving via the dumbwaiter serving hatch, the tension mounts as the comedy unfolds.
Pinter’s taut dialogue, some of Cambridge’s finest performers, and the claustrophobia of the atmospheric Corpus Christi Playroom all collide to create a visceral piece of freshly funny and striking theatre. Starring Ben E Kavanagh and Oliver Soden. Directed by Patrick Garety.
- May 2009
Anthony Neilson’s critically acclaimed play The Wonderful World of Dissocia dramatises an acute experience of mental ill health. Lisa Jones’ life has been out-of-sync for a year now, impaired by a sense of hopelessness that will not abate. Luckily, the answer is simple. The answer lies in The Wonderful World of Dissocia. Act one follows Lisa’s spectacular and hilarious journey through Dissocia in pursuit of an hour of her life that she has lost. While the starkly counter-posed act two returns an audience to the upright position and depicts Lisa’s treatment on an ordinary psychiatric ward. By turns uproarious and arresting, Dissocia is an ecstatic, carnivalesque experience that is simultaneously politically profound.
- May 2009
The dead are back, and angry, and they can’t get back to where they came from. The living are fed up, and wish the dead would just give up and go quietly back to where they came from. The comedy mounts as Elvira begins plotting to get her husband back – once and for all – and to put an entirely new meaning on the phrase, ‘Til death do us part…’
Charles Condomine, a successful novelist, wishes to learn about the occult for a novel he is writing, and he arranges for an eccentric medium, Madame Arcati, to hold a séance at his house. At the séance, she inadvertently summons Charles's first wife, Elvira, who has been dead for seven years. Only Charles can see or hear Elvira, and his second wife, Ruth, does not believe that Elvira exists until a floating vase is handed to her out of thin air. The ghostly Elvira makes continued, and increasingly desperate, efforts to disrupt Charles's current marriage. She finally sabotages his car in the hope of killing him so that he will join her in the spirit world, but it is Ruth rather than Charles who drives off and is killed. This sets off a hilarious chain of events involving ectoplasm, incredulity and much laughter.
Set in the late 30s, the plays embodies the quintessence of the English summer: elegance, sophistication, and just a hint of something nasty…
- May 2009
Excerpts from the winners of the Marlowe Masterclass competition, honed in a Masterclass led by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, will be performed in a Showcase at Soho Theatre for an invited audience of theatre professionals.
Performances, each lasting 10 minutes, written by:
Jennifer Boon Luke Butcher Josh Coles-Riley Emma Hogan Jessica Hyslop Iain Maitland Freddy Syborn
Please contact the Marlowe Masterclass & Writers' Rep, Nausikaä, for more information at marlowemasterclass@gmail.com
See www.marlowemasterclass.co.uk for biographies. weblogs and much more!
- March 2009
Stoppard does Love.
Henry is a successful playwright trying to write a play about the true nature of love. Does he even know what that is? What if joy and love in art is best reflected in pop music?
Henry and his wife Charlotte, their friends Max and Annie, and a jailed political activist named Brodie collide and their lives will never be the same.
Stoppard’s crackling and hilarious dialogue frames this deep exploration of love, fidelity, art and joy. When does motivation matter? Does form affect the content’s impact? And most of all, what is real?
- March 2009
Corpus playroom will be transported back to a Gothic wilderness courtesy of 'The Vampire', J. R. Planché's melodramatic masterpiece. 'Something more than human' haunts the Scottish highlands in this exuberant, sometimes ridiculous drama, where a voracious vampire and a beautiful virgin take their places amongst the craggy cliffs and disembodied voices which animate Planche's creepy yet comic creation. As Lady Bridget exclaims, "Mercy preserve us! I tremble all over!"
- February 2009
‘The foreigners will pack up and leave to go home. Others will read about it in the papers or hear a two minute spot on the television. Are we worth two minutes of someone’s time?’
New writer Bryan Oliver presents us with a moving tale of three women subjected to the horrors of an ethically divided society. Through the mode of retrospective storytelling we are introduced to slices of a shocking reality that becomes increasingly identifiable as a depiction of those tragic events that we all hear about in our lives, but which few of us actually see and recognise as real. Night Breath takes us through a heartrending emotional journey at the end of which we are forced to question whether the displaced stories we hear about in the news are indeed worth more than the two minutes’ thought we give them.
- February 2009
- February 2009
Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for Godot. The arrival of Pozzo and Lucky helps to pass the time, but they agree "it would have passed anyway".
Beckett's supreme modern classic, once described as a play in which "nothing happens – twice", is as striking, poignant and avant-garde as it was fifty years ago. Universal and timeless, the dazzling, lyrical language captures a perfect blend of humour and tragic insight.
Ahead of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart's production, this remarkable black comedy comes to Cambridge in a striking interpretation which demands to be seen… …if only to pass the time.
- February 2009
This year's Fletcher Players Freshers' show is a brand new comedy by Corpus' own Footlights star Mark Fiddaman.
- December 2008
King's Drama is proud to present its first ever production!
'Never Swim Alone' is a bizarre, funny yet unsettling play by Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor, which takes place as a surreal competition by two men, Frank and Bill, who know each other too well. No ones knows what the competition is about, and the referee interrupts whenever she feels like it. But as the play unfolds, the deeper purpose of their rivalry emerges... A beach. A bay. A point. Two men. A girl. Their past. Who is the first man? Who is the man with the gun?
- December 2008
‘Both thought-provoking and funny Macbett is a play for our time’
Writing during the Cold War, Eugene Ionesco, the master of absurdism, transforms Shakespeare's sinister tragedy of ambition into a surreal and darkly comic tale for the modern audience. His lively parody is at once a fantastic satire and an angry commentary on 20th century life. Fusing elements of the theatre of the absurd and commedia dell'arte, Macbett will expose the corruptibility of the Everyman in a harrowingly dark, yet sharply comic production.
- December 2008
The Revived Emmanuel Dramatics Society presents:
MACBETT by Eugene Ionesco
Corpus Christi Playroom 2nd-6th December 7.00pm
‘Both thought-provoking and funny Macbett is a play for our time’
Writing during the Cold War, Eugene Ionesco, the master of absurdism, transforms Shakespeare's sinister tragedy of ambition into a surreal and darkly comic tale for the modern audience. His lively parody is at once a fantastic satire and an angry commentary on 20th century life. Fusing elements of the theatre of the absurd and commedia dell'arte, Macbett will expose the corruptibility of the Everyman in a harrowingly dark, yet sharply comic production.
Director Celeste Dring cad57 Producer: Charlotte Sewell cas89
- November 2008
- November 2008
It is the year 1663. London's not yet burning and the plague is yet to come - and women, for the first time, take centre stage. Women are on the frontline of theatre - dancing, pouting, sighing, dying every night for a lascivious horde of cheering on-lookers. Up in the box, a man in glittering robes smiles and laughs. It is the King. But who will he have - and who will he keep? Enter into the world of PLAYHOUSE CREATURES, where comedy and tragedy mingle, where a host of women, risking all, try to find the way to freedom and happiness through theatre. Behind the stage make-up, cracks are starting to form. Who will swim, and who will sink in this alluring but treacherous world?
- November 2008
It's EXTREME. It's TERRIFYING. It's MILDLY PERILOUS. Buckle your seatbelts. Pull on your crash-helmets. Fill out your risk assessments. And welcome to the brand new sketch show from the pens of seasoned Cambridge comedians Will Hensher, David Isaacs, Lucien Young and Tom Ovens. This is the fast-acting, long-lasting, zero-calorie show which guarantees all-year-round protection and cleans, even beneath the rim. Ladies and gentlemen, we present SCENES OF MILD PERIL. Bring your own defibrillators.
- November 2008
Dangerously close to the centre of a new-found and fragile political stability, in a society exhausted by decades of civil war, stands a man physically deformed and psychologically scarred, raised in a warzone, incapable of empathy - but overpoweringly charismatic. A chorus of women whose lives Richard has destroyed can only look on, prophesying their nation’s destruction, as he manipulates, seduces and kills his way to the only thing he believes can restore his disfigured sense of self-worth: the crown. Discover the disturbing power of Shakespeare’s first great anti-hero.
- November 2008
Frank is an English professor with the Open University. He has taken the job for the money, drinks, and is a terrible teacher. Rita is a loud, Liverpudlian hairdresser- and she wants to learn ‘everything’. When Rita tumbles- literally- into Frank’s office, an unlikely relationship develops between the two. Comic, yet at times deeply poignant, Willy Russell’s “Educating Rita” follows the developing friendship between the couple, highlighting the issues of class divide, human relationships, and the value of education. Whilst Frank may be the educated one, it is clear that Rita has a thing or two to teach him.
- November 2008
In Verona, best friends Proteus and Valentine see themselves as experts in love. Yet when they travel to Milan, Proteus is so attracted to Valentine’s beloved, Silvia that he is willing to do anything to win her hand. This is all news to his beloved, Julia, who has travelled to Milan in disguise to find him. Add in some scene-stealing servants, an over-protective father, a gang of bandits and a mangy dog called Crab and you’ve got The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of Shakespeare’s most youthful comedies. In matters of love and war is all really fair?
- November 2008
The Corpus Christi drama society The Fletcher Players present “Dead Woman Walking” a new comedy by Jack Green. Unlikely topic for a comedy: death. You die and nobody mourns for you, nobody misses you... What an opportunity! Instead of the eternal afterlife, you find yourself a ghost on a mission. An adventurous romp through haunted houses, motels and car chases. A dead woman walking, let loose to torment her hapless victims; beginning a journey that leads all to strange, new places. And did I mention? It’s very funny
- October–November 2008
Troy has fallen to the Greeks, and Hecuba, its beloved queen, is widowed and enslaved. She mourns her once great city, and the death of her husband, but when fresh horrors emerge, her grief turns to white-hot rage, and a lust for revenge.
A savage indictment of the brutal devastation of war, Hecuba is brought to life in this thrillingly visceral new version by Frank McGuinness.
