ADC Theatre: Shows

Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents
Canterbury Tales
Chaucer (adapted by Mike Poulton)
Tuesday 7th February - Saturday 11th February
Tue & Wed £8/£6, Thu-Sat £10/£8

Come and join the revelry as a group of pilgrims entertain one another with stories as they journey to Canterbury Cathedral. There are tales of morality and warning from the Prioress and Physician; bawdiness and comedy from the Miller and Reeve and watch out for the Monk, who never ceases to ‘bewail in manner tragical’!

Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ may be familiar to a few English students ... But have you ever considered them expressed through a variety of genres including puppetry, physical theatre and operetta style? You may be surprised (and delighted) to discover that people in the 14th century were not all that different from us!

Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents
The Boys in the Band
Mart Crowley
Tuesday 14th February - Saturday 18th February
Tue & Wed £8/£6, Thu-Sat £10/£8

“It’s like watching an accident on the highway – you can’t look at it and you can’t look away.”

Harold’s closest friends are throwing him a birthday party. Before the end of the night, the friendships and relationships of nine male friends and lovers are tested to their extremes as the group deals (or not) with its demons. Realised with startling naturalism, Boys in the Band is by turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, laced through with the tragedy of young men struggling to make sense of themselves and each other. With an all-male cast, Mart Crowley’s hard-hitting drama about homosexuality in the 1960s comes to the ADC stage for the very first time.

Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club / Fletcher Players presents
Moments
Hellie Cranney
Tuesday 14th February - Saturday 18th February, ADC Theatre, Larkum Studio
Tue-Wed £5/£4, Thu-Sat £6/£5

Ava and Daniel are strangers living in Liverpool. Quietly, seemingly without anyone noticing, their lives have begun to fall apart. Finding solace and a little social embarrassment in a few chance encounters, they begin to tell each other their stories.

Described by the author as 'a play about what we're willing to share, and what we keep to ourselves', Moments will leave audiences divided over what the play has really revealed about its characters.

A captivating debut from a writer of serious impact and obvious promise, Hellie Cranney was the winner of 'Best Script' in the Cambridge 24 Hour Plays 2011.

Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents
The Priory
Michael Wynne
Tuesday 21st February - Saturday 25th February
Tue & Wed £8/£6, Thu-Sat £10/£8

A few friends. People we like. No craziness. The days of the big blow out are over.

Kate is thrilled when she finds a house in the country to escape to for New Year’s Eve. After a rough year, this next one is going to be great. What could be better than beginning it with a select group of her closest friends? A famous travel writer and his wife-to-be (who met him the day before), a failed actor ex-boyfriend and his insufferable BBC exec. wife, an architect suffering the highs and lows of e-Love...these permanently stressed, (mostly) successful thirty-somethings in search of a good time combine in one hilariously lethal cocktail.

This sharp, biting comedy comes to the ADC fresh from its London premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for 'Best New Comedy'.

Laughter, tears, dancing, dressing up, cake, cocaine...a farcical recipe for a tragicomic masterpiece.

Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents
The Seventh Seal
Ingmar Bergman
Wednesday 22nd February - Saturday 25th February
Wed £5/£4, Thu-Sat £6/£5

The Knight and his Squire have returned from ten years crusading. Yet, on their homecoming, they find their town devastated by plague, poverty and persecution.

Travelling through the ravaged country, they join forces with an actor, his wife and their babe-in-arms for the final leg of their journey. As the sun sets, they wander into the forest, knowing Death himself follows behind, ready and waiting….

This theatrical re-working of Ingmar Bergman’s influential film dangles between dream and reality, life and death, and tragedy and comedy.

Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club presents
Aria da Capo
Edna St Vincent Millay
Wednesday 29th February - Saturday 3rd March
Wed £5/£4, Thu-Sat £6/£5

“Can’t act! Can’t act! Listen to the woman! You’re blonde, are you not? You have no education, have you? Can’t act! You underrate yourself, my dear!”

Pierrot and Columbine have been performing their scene for a long time. Pierrot is the sad clown, pining for the love of the clever serving wench Columbine. They sit at a long table decked out with a splendid banquet of plastic food and deliver their lines. Tonight, though, their little comic scene is interrupted. They are kicked off the stage, replaced by a pastoral scene starring two shepherds who can’t quite remember their lines. When the script moves towards an unpleasant climax, however, they can’t seem to stop acting it out.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, a bisexual, chain-smoking lyric poet, was the first female ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. First staged just after the end of the First World War, this unusual play, never before performed in Cambridge, conceals a searing appraisal of the human condition. It is "amusing, brutal, and brief."

Festen
Adaptation by David Eldridge
Tuesday 6th March - Saturday 10th March
Tue & Wed £8/£6, Thu-Sat £10/£8

A family gathering. A time for celebration. A time to mourn those recently bereaved. A time for secrets and conga lines and songs, and for Christian to present his father Helge with a choice: two envelopes, two speeches, and one harsh truth that will shatter proceedings.

From the director of last year’s critically acclaimed ‘All My Sons’ comes one of the finest plays of the twenty-first century: ‘Festen’, adapted from the Lars von Trier film by David Eldridge, a challenging and harrowing story of a family no longer able to lie to each other or themselves.

Coda
Tom Powell
Wednesday 7th March - Saturday 10th March
Wed £5/£4, Thu-Sat £6/£5

Witness the darkest side of love.

CODA is a bold and compelling depiction of what happens when an ordinary relationship is thrown into extraordinary relief.

Jess and Cal have moved in together. But just as they are beginning to unpack their belongings, a disappearance threatens to shatter their new-found happiness. As memories thought submerged in the past re-emerge with disturbing resonance, we see their world fall apart when they try to dissect each other’s motives. Proceeding at breakneck pace, CODA twists and turns with revelatory force and laugh-inducing moments that will leave you unsettled and unsure. Come and be a witness to its first ever production.

Be moved. Be changed. But don’t leave your seat until you’ve seen the final CODA.

Combined Actors Of Cambridge presents
The Weir
Conor McPherson
Tuesday 27th March - Saturday 31st March
Tue & Wed £8/£6, Thu-Sat £10/£8

Written by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, The Weir won the Laurence Olivier Best New Play Award in 1998 and gained much critical acclaim. The play is typically Irish - one moment funny and the next poignant, one moment whimsical, the next tragic.

Set in a one-room pub, attached to a farm in a backwater area near Sligo, Brendan, the publican, and his two regulars, Jack and Jim, are challenged by the arrival of Finbar, local boy-made-good, bringing with him an attractive young woman, Valerie, who has come to live locally. The four customers are provoked into relating personal experiences that are inexplicable. The story-telling with its idiomatic Irish weaves a magical spell that will hold audiences in thrall as it moves from whimsy to tragedy.

The Weir contains strong language and is not suitable for children.

BAWDS presents
Terra Nova
Ted Tally
Tuesday 24th April - Saturday 28th April
Tue, Wed & Matinee £9/£7, Thu-Sat £10/£8

Ted Tally’s Terra Nova commemorates the centenary of Captain Scott’s last expedition to the South Pole.