- January 2008
Two of Chekhov's short farces. Perfect fare for a cold January evening.
"The Bear": Mrs. Popova has been in mourning for the last 12 months, ever since her husband died. The fact that he cheated on her is, perversely, a source of motivation for this. When she is rudely interrupted by Sminov, a bankrupt landowner who is calling in his debts, the tensions rise between these two uncompromising characters until breaking point.
"The Night before the Trial": Zaytsev arrives at an inn on a freezing night. He is due in court the next day, where he is to be put on trial for bigamy, fraud, and the attempted murder of a sporting goods manufacturer. If found guilty, he'll kill himself right there in the dock. Such thoughts of suicide evaporate when he catches sight of the lodger in the next room, but what can he do, with her husband also present?
- January 2008
"Do you remember the night we met? You stepped on the bottle shards between the cracks in the pavement...We danced in your bedroom, to the sound of broken glass."
Clare Actors presents two short plays unified under the themes of fragility and fragmentation.
"Losing Adonis" is a modern treatment of classical myth, exploring the consequences of a life lived through fairytale. "Song" recalls the chaotic memories of a troubled young man on the brink of self-destruction.
"Broken Glass" is a new and innovative project, drawing on the loves and losses so common to us all, yet so resolutely unique.
See www.brokenglassplay.co.uk for further details.
- November–December 2007
- November 2007
"Out there, where the sky shines, humans say: 'To thyself be true'. In here, trolls say: 'Be true to yourself - ish.'"
Caught in a place between reality and fantasy, Peer Gynt is searching for his identity- what is that? Who is he? What can he trust to tell him? Peer begins his quest through a landscape of time, place and mind. At times tragic, comic and fantastic, Ibsen fashions a world that is other to our own yet inextricably connected, a Borderland between here and now and other and elsewhere. Are we alone here? This imaginative and lively production creates the energy, bawdiness and innovation of Kenneth McLeish's National Theatre translation.
Book through the Cambridge Arts Theatre, St Edward's Passage on 01223 503333.
www.peer-gynt.co.uk
- November 2007
‘If thou dost love me Show me thy thought.’
One of Shakespeare’s very greatest plays, Othello’s stage is alive with scrutinies and suspicions. This stripped-down production will see six actors watching and being watched, enacting through intense, highly physical performance the tragic downfall of the Moor. Rarely staged in Cambridge, this production will bring to the text a genuinely exciting interpretation and innovative style. Be sure to see it.
- October–November 2007
“Gemma was fine. Political.” “She wasn’t political.” “She wanted to adopt a Vietnamese baby outside the Uffizi.”
Gemma has stopped speaking. Lorna thinks it’s because she’s been sleeping with Rob. Alastair thinks it’s because of his love-letter. Gail wonders how she is going to cope with a baby when her best friend won’t speak and her boyfriend keeps coming to bed in a tracksuit. Rob wants to come round later for sex.
Minghella’s sharply comic view of modern life questions why silence is such a threat. This onslaught of infidelity, intimacy and indifference will make you laugh, but also make you wonder what we’re doing with all these words anyway...
- May 2007
In a production that features four new short plays, a group of eclectic characters are assembled to offer us glimpses into their lives. Their stories are, by turns, tragic, farcical and truly bizarre. One woman resists the desperate attempts of her former partner to stake a claim on their unborn child; elsewhere a jealous ex pursues his beloved in an art gallery that has a life of its own; in a dressers shop two couples swap stories and clothes and on higher ground, a deceased priest finds heaven hijacked by the mafia; another. Corpus Christi’s finest new student writers present ‘Making Space’.
- May 2007
“And why does it always have to be the people like me who have to sacrifice, why are we always the one ones who have to make concessions when something has to be conceded, why always be who has to bite her tongue, why?”
Torture, confession and Schubert’s symphony.
“Oh, Paulina – isn’t it time we stopped?”
- March 2007
Join the Fletcher Players as they welcome the Owlets Theatre Group from their sister college of Corpus Christi, Oxford. This will be a unique one night only showcase of the best talent and new writing from two Oxbridge colleges who enjoy a strong, yet competitive relationship. Don't miss this unusual chance of seeing combined Oxbridge drama and comedy at its best!
- March 2007
This year sees the 10th annual production of Smorgasbord, THE festival celebrating the best of Cambridge's new writing and drama scene! Four original and varied plays by student writers will be performed, showcasing the best new writing talent that Cambridge has to offer!
- March 2007
A rainy Monday morning in London. Awkward chance meetings, instant attractions and casual betrayals characterise the crammed Tube trains and busy streets of the capital. Men and women follow their regular routines on a day that they can only assume will be dull and humdrum. Yet as grave news about the most powerful symbol of national unity breaks, the normal rules governing English reservation and reticence cease to apply, and six different people are offered a fleeting chance to embrace a life just a little less ordinary.
- March 2007
'If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.'
One of Shakespeare's darkest works, Macbeth is also one of his most popular and has fascinated and disturbed audiences for centuries. This new fast-paced, minimalist production will use the intimate atmosphere of the Corpus Playroom to explore the tragic elements at the play's heart. Through exploiting movement and live music throughout the auditorium the production aims to throw the audience into the thick of the action, so that viewers will fully experience the immediacy of the fear and paranoia which grips the protagonists as events begin to spiral out of control.
- February–March 2007
"The main thing about broads is two things. One: The Way to Get Laid is to Treat 'Em Like Shit, and Two: Nothing, nothing makes you so attractive to the opposite sex as getting your rocks off on a regular basis."
Welcome to the world of the modern relationship, where sex is a commodity and love is just a word. Sexual hostility crackles through every scene of Mamet's dissection of human interaction in its various states of love, lust and dissatisfaction. An hour long, this is a play to make you cringe in your seat and cry with laughter, this is an unforgettable portrayal of sex and friendship, and what it really means to say "I love you"...
- February 2007
‘Salter’ messed-up with his first-born. He wanted a second-chance. But with the same child. A family tragedy meets futuristic fantasy, Caryl Churchill's 'A Number' confronts us with the potentially nightmarish consequences of a family experiencing the effects of reproductive cloning. Challenging us to reconsider what exactly ‘it’ is that individuates each one of us, and exploring how our senses of identity can be altered as we experience the effects of scientific advancement, ‘A Number’ is a poignant and timely play.
- February 2007
- February 2007
An Englishman, an Irishman and an American are locked up in a cell in the Middle East. McGuinness explores the way these individuals cope with their struggles and reveals the survival mechanisms inherent in human nature. The result is a humorous and deeply moving piece of theatre in which the character relationships and dynamics that develop are fascinating to watch. In our current political climate this play is not only poignant but it also offers an insight into the reality of what some prisoners might face. It is a compelling portrayal of three characters who show determination not only to survive but to retain their sanity and identity in the most challenging of circumstances.
- November–December 2006
Music. Dance. Comedy. Drama.
The Ultimate Show.
Originally produced in the late 1970s, Side by Side by Sondheim is a tribute to the greatest musical composer of the modern age. Drawing on Stephen Sondheim's remarkable lyrics and exciting scores, featuring only seven actors but hundreds of characters, and woven together with a new and witty take on Ned Sherrin's original narration, this show promises to be an evening you will never forget and the perfect end to your Michaelmas term.
- November 2006
- November 2006
Beverly is bored and brash, overbearing and overly-confident; and she has decided to throw a party…
Excluded from Abigail’s party, the hostess, her husband and guests spend the evening chez Beverly, surrounded by 1970s domestic must-haves, décor and music. Over G&Ts and “cheese on sticks” a savagely funny study of pretentious middle-class manners evolves. Mike Leigh’s perceptive dialogue and eye for social mores construct a time bomb of emotional tension. At times hilarious, at others squeamishly awkward, always engrossing; don’t miss this opportunity to see one of Leigh’s best loved plays brought to life at the Corpus Playroom.
- November 2006
Two one-act comedies by the British playwright Tom Stoppard (who wrote the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love) full of marital infidelity and sweet revenge. Two lesser-known plays, they display Stoppard’s genius for visual comedy and verbal wit. 'Another Moon Called Earth', set in an alternate reality where British Astronauts have succeeded in landing on the moon first, incorporates death, mysterious illness and philosophical endeavour while 'Teeth' demonstrates that affairs with the dentist's wife are bound to lead to trouble – “All round him there are smiles like broken-down brooms.”
- October–November 2006
A new translation by Ade O'Brien, promises to be the best Chekhov production this year. Bringing the rich and youthful humour of the piece to the forefront, the production is both uplifting comedy and an intimate tragedy.
- October 2006
‘Oh what a jolly family.’ Edward Albee’s caustic and cautionary play thrusts the audience to the empty soul of the prettily packaged American Dream. In a soulless apartment, domineering Mommy and sexless Daddy live with Grandma, whose senility makes her saner than the puppets of married life playing around her. The ‘unexpected’ visit of voracious and hypocritical do-gooder Mrs Barker reveals some deeply grotesque home truths. Yet the absurd emotional violence is delicately wrapped in the alluring shine of comedy, mirroring the disturbingly vacuous Mommy and Daddy’s attempts to claw onto the sheen and dazzling semblance of wholesome American ideals.
- October 2006
One of the most reknown authors of the mid-twentieth century has written this harrowing tragedy about a young girl who falls in love with an older, married man. Upon the death of her parents she moves in with two maiden aunts and an uncle who is a crippled priest. The passion of her love cannot be disguised for long in such surroundings. The affair is thrown into the open in a blistering scene. The girl does not feel that loving the man of her life is in any way wrong or indecent, but each episode in the closing plot leads her deeper and deeper into an inextricable situation. Finally, the wife of the man comes to see the young girl, and the tragic circle is completed. The girl struggles fiercely against all the forces within her and without, until she is entirely overwhelmed by the descending tragedy.
- October 2006
Two young men arrive at the end of the line. As the last train slips away forever, they are faced with the universal predicament of choice. Should we regret or be happy with our past? Were the choices we’ve made the right ones? And most importantly: how should we spend the last few moments of our lives? ‘Untimely Figs’ is a piercing and rapid new piece of writing which explores mortality with both humour and tragedy. It is a drama that any audience will feel themselves being drawn into emotionally and philosophically. Performed in ‘real-time’, the Corpus Playroom becomes a ticking bomb as we watch an unrelenting clock count down to the last second. Will they find the ‘right way’ to end?’
- September 2006
Dramas on stage and off in a beleaguered comprehensive. High quality small-scale theatre from Cambridge's vibrant new Horseshoe Theatre Company, following sell-out runs of 'Yerma' and 'An Inspector Calls'.
- May 2006
Making Space brings you the best of new writing for the Corpus Playroom. In four new short plays which take their inspiration from ideas in literature, film and music, dystopian worlds, backpackers, courtesans and a college Head Porter jostle for the audience's attention. Be prepared to laugh and to cry in a romp through the Cambridge imagination. Space is Made.
- May 2006
White lie or brown nose? Back-slapping fun or backbiting hate? Plain talking - or just plain stupid? Honesty? Or tyranny?
You're not mad just because you're a minority of one. But sometimes you are anyway. Molière's Misanthrope is a self-proclaimed misfit, waging war on the dishonesty he sees around himself in society, despite being totally smitten with the queen bee of his social circle. This production transfers the bitchiness, sexual intrigues and self-righteous social protest of the original to a modern university context whilst retaining the text of one of the greatest verse comedies in the canon. Get mad! Pull hair! Tear sonnets to pieces! Do the hoovering! All in French! This isn't just war. This is misanthropy.
Performed in French with English surtitles.
- March 2006
- March 2006
The traditional power structures of both the theatre and the bedroom are called into question as three women live their lives and play their games. Sexuality and its repressions and expressions, and the politics of everyday life find voice in this devised production where the inadequacy of the status-quo must be met head on.
- February–March 2006
- February–March 2006
- February 2006
How do we love someone who falls outside the moral code? Harry and Nan are a couple whose marriage has become a comfortable back drop for witty remarks and infidelity. However, this relationship is tested when their 39 year old son Isaac returns home seeking refuge from his own terrifying feelings towards someone he is forbidden to love. Harry and Nan search for clues, desperate to make sense of this horror, alternately looking for exoneration and punishment for what must be their fault. They want to love him. But they don't know how.
- February 2006
'The Father' is one of Strindberg's most aggressive works; it relates a feverish nightmare of the struggle Strindberg saw between defiant masculinity and the treacherous weakness of women. The play is a stark portrayal of a bitter domestic battle.
- February 2006
Set in the trenches of the First World War, Journey's End follows the lives of a group of British officers in the run up to a major offensive. Raleigh, an 18 year old fresh out of public school is full of heroric ideas and enthusiasm to join the war effort. This is met with the brutality of trench life when he confronts his former school cricketing hero, the captain of the battalion, and witnesses first hand the cold reality of the destruction of war upon human nature.
Whilst poignant, the play demonstrates the heartwarming strength of human relationships under the most testing of conditions, portraying moments of tenderness, sensitivity, anger, desperation, self destruction and humour.
"Then we all go west in the big attack - and she goes on thinking I'm a fine fellow for ever - and ever - and ever"
- February 2006
What if beauty wasn't a gift? What if radiance was a disease? 'The Drowned World' is one of the most exciting plays of the 21st century and explores a dystopian future where the 'cowardly,' and 'graceless' rule, and where the eradication of beauty is their goal. 'The Drowned World' addresses questions about the nature of persecution, torture and living in an authoritarian state. But at the same time, it is personal, questioning whether love and humanity can survive in extreme circumstances.
Written in 2002, Gary Owen's play won the George Devine award and a Fringe First. 'The Drowned World' promises to be a stunning and unmissable piece of theatre.
- February 2006
