Easter 2008
Cruel and Tender
Tues 29th April - Sat 3rd May, 7pm
Far away a battle rages and an entire city is turned to dust. Amelia can't sleep. She waits for news of her husband, a great General with a seemingly decisive victory. But when the motives for war start to look disturbingly personal, his wife becomes desperate to hold on to his love.
Martin Crimp's modern adaptation of Sophocles' The Trachiniae propels the ancient story of marriage and violence into an all too familiar world of political hypocrisy and emotional terrorism.
Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys
Tues 29th April - Sat 3rd May, 9:30pm
Dominic Clarke is the smug and quick-witted Latin tutor at Chartham Park Preparatory School For Boys. Having successfully bedded the dying headmaster's wife, he is in line to inherit the school as his own, allowing him to influence a whole generation of Chartham boys to his own twisted ends. But an old school hand, Herbert Brookshaw, has discovered something about Clarke-he has been having an illicit love affair with a thirteen-year-old pupil. What follows is a vicious and twisted power struggle between the two teachers, who fight for the ownership of the school with blackmail, treachery and deceit.
Journey's End
Tues 6th - Sat 10th May, 7pm
"It seems - uncanny. It makes me feel we're - we're all just waiting for something."
1918. The trenches of the Somme. A group of officers prepares for an imminent German attack. Commanding Officer Stanhope drinks to forget.Hibbert feigns illness. New boy Raleigh thinks it's all a jolly exciting game. A smash hit in the West End, this tense and intricately realized portrait of a few days in the lives of a few men is a poignant testament to the courage and resilience of humanity under the most horrendous conditions imaginable.
The Union Flag
Tues 6th - Sat 10th May, 9:30pm
Three women. Three lives. Three journeys. Belle is on the verge of womanhood and adult life, but held back from her future by the tragedy that keeps her clinging to a past of innocence. Wendy is having sex with Jack, and also with Robert, but does she care about either, and do either care about her. Rachel is a teenage prostitute, forced to assess the path she has chosen through encounters with three memorable clients. In a new play by Adam Hollingworth, the true thoughts and feelings of a misunderstood and misinterpreted generation are laid bare in a powerfully stark production of intense grief, confused morals, and deep-rooted self denial.
Scaramouche Jones
Tues 13th - Sat 17th May, 7pm
The bastard clown of a Gypsy whore, the strangely white-faced Scaramouche was always destined to be a clown. On the eve of the Millennium, he recalls the odyssey of his life, from his birth a century before in a scummy Trinidad knocking shop, through the darkest and most extraordinary episodes of the twentieth century. Sensitive, comic, and poignant, Scaramouche Jones is an intense and elegant contemplation on the human race.
Oleanna
Tues 13th - Sat 17th May, 9:30pm
The Fletcher Players present
David Mamet’s OLEANNA
‘You vicious little bitch. You think you can come in here with your political correctness and destroy my life?’
‘I don’t want “revenge”. I want UNDERSTANDING!’
One professor; one student. One man; one woman. He’s sexist. He’s elitist. He’s harassed her… Hasn’t he? From the pen of acclaimed playwright David Mamet, Oleanna explores the gender divide and the gap between teachers and students. Can men and women ever really understand each other, and do they ever mean what they say? Does privilege mean prejudice, and who will have the upper hand?
Frozen Beach
Tues 20th - Sat 24th May, 7pm
Frozen Beach: an isolated holiday home on a far-away island. Five young
women enjoying a vacation begin to feel their friendship and sanity give way to animosity and vengeance after an insect sting and a tantrum. Eight years later, and eight years later again, we see the consequences of adultery, violence, mistrust and deception manifest once again in that very same house, as those who survive struggle to let go of the past. Staged in the original Japanese, with English subtitles, Frozen Beach is a strange and entertaining insight into modern Japanese theatre.
Fewer Emergencies
Tues 20th - Sat 24th May, 9:30pm
A group of people sit telling stories. Who are these storytellers? Actors improvising? Executives at a script conference? It is never clear if the storylines they are narrating are real events or simply imagined, events being roughed out for an unknown purpose.
Crimp presents a world where happiness is sacrificed for a nice handmade table, truth for easy lies and we lock our children up when the real horror is really within. This is not an imagined world but our world today, where we are all content in our ignorance of a lifestyle threatened by violence and unspecified Emergencies.
Old Times
Tues 10th - Sat 14th June, 7pm
Old Times' exemplifies Pinter's sober skills in alienation, breakdown and silence. The intimate reunion of two friends after twenty years becomes a nightmarish revelation of all things past, in which then and now, love and power, and memory and fact become entangled and destructive. For them, the house becomes hell; for the audience, the theatre becomes threatening. Things fall apart until a terrible conclusion, which captures in a moment the tragic futility of their existence. After the horror created by old times, the characters can only enact Wittgenstein's maxim: "that of which we cannot speak, must be passed over in silence."
No Exit
Tues 10th - Sat 14th June, 9:30pm
'Hell is - other people.'
In one of the 20th Century's most prominent and philosophical plays we see how three intriguing characters; a lesbian, a woman desperate for the touch of a male, and a man agonised by his cowardice; each face an eternity of cruel self-realisation. Set against the eloquent backdrop of a Second Empire style drawing room, Sartre's haunting depiction of Hell manages to stimulate the audience's thoughts, as we are forced to question our ideas on the meaning of life.
Buying Tickets
Tickets for all productions are priced at £5.50 (£4 concessions) unless otherwise stated.
On the door: You can purchase tickets from The Cambridge Arts Theatre stage door (next to the Corpus Playroom) up to thirty minutes before the performance.
In advance: Tickets are available throughout the week of the performance. You can purchase them from The Cambridge Arts Theatre Box Office, either by visiting or by calling 01223 503333. Opening Hours are 12pm - 8pm (12pm - 5pm for that night's performance).