Cinderella longs for the simple things in life: a loving family, a welcoming community, and a bedroom without rats. But in the Kingdom of Newtopia, everyone except her best friend Buttons, is too busy to stop for a quick chat, say hello, or even make eye contact. And so, when the King announces a lavish ball for Newtopia's richest, Cinderella isn't too impressed - but everything changes when she meets the shy yet charming prince outside the palace gardens. If Cinderella wants to reunite with the Prince and defeat the Wicked Stepmother’s wickedest plan of all, she’ll need a miracle. Will her wish be granted? Get your festive fix of fun, fantasy, and fits of laughter in this year’s CUADC/Footlights Pantomime: Cinderella.

It’s Christmas time in early Edwardian England. A noble household prepares to ‘Deck the Halls’ in festive celebration, and to welcome officers returning from war. As the house swells with guests and Christmas cheer, two quite different love matches are born. Set amidst fireside banter, courtyard antics, masked balls and comic courtship, all seems well as wedding preparations ensue. But, deceit and scandal, conflict and heartache threaten to undermine the celebrations and disrupt the happiness of this household..... Will love and joy win out?

Leaky radiators. Dodgy PE teachers. Ice packs for brain haemorrhages. A Comprehensive Understanding is a fast-paced, character-led comedy created by and for the state school kids. Expect surreal satire, painfully accurate assemblies, and the kind of humour forged in the chaos of the British comprehensive system. Get ready to see where your tax money is going - leave your lacrosse sticks, fancy crests and Latin mottos at the door...

Footlights Smokers bring you an unforgettable variety night of comedy. A rotating cast of Cambridge’s funniest folks take to the stage with new, exciting material from sketch to stand-up to songs and more. It can be silly, surreal, sharp or satirical, but will always make you laugh. No two Smokers are ever the same! Don't miss these iconic comedy variety nights at the ADC Theatre throughout the Autumn season.

The 1930s are on fire; while Antony and Cleopatra ascend into fiery passion. War encroaches from who formerly held them dear. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, written in 1607, chronicles one of history’s most passionate and reckless love stories. At face value, this dramatic tragedy traces the dichotomy between the triumvirate-ruled Rome and Ptolemaic Egypt. Yet, the parallels between Egypt and Rome are beyond geography and extend into the tensions between: love and sacrifice; hedonism and duty; affair and matrimony; myth and man. The European Theatre Group 2026/27 production highlights the political aspects of the play by setting our production at the teetering edge of the Great Depression. Cleopatra’s kingdom becomes a self-indulgent moonshine-ridden dinner party that deals long card games and dances into the dusk of the Jazz Age. Rome is the domain of terse board meetings, senate hearings and frigid negotiations by those seeking to withhold financial and political systems from utter collapse. With a musical landscape that calls back to the 1920s and 1930s, we ask the question often left amiss in considerations of the play: How much can we defend in the name of love?

Behind You! is a comedy sketch show that takes the mickey out of all things panto, dragging fairytale nonsense into the most boring corners of real life. Packed with audience interaction, awkward fourth-wall breaks, hilarious monologues, and happy endings that go slightly wrong, Behind You! leans into everything we love about pantomime and makes it naughtier, weirder, more awkward, and even sillier. Larger-than-life characters bring a fast-paced barrel of laughs where the audience are part of the chaos. A playful celebration of panto magic, Behind You! will undoubtedly build excitement for this year's CUADC/Footlights Pantomime: Cinderella.

Come on babe, why don’t we paint the town? Are you a fan of pop classics, jazzy anthems, or show tunes? Perfect! CU Show Choir will bring their crisp harmonies, smooth dancing, and classic camp fun to all your favourites. Whether you already love Show Choir, or are yet to discover us, this show has something for everyone to sing, dance (and even scream) along to. Join us for a night of glitz, glamour... and all that jazz!

It's the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society's regular bar nights where each night a new cast of performers sing musical theatre songs for a smaller audience in a more relaxed venue, around a chosen theme. The atmosphere is always friendly and uplifting, and the performances are always of a top quality. The most wonderful thing about these shows is that the more intimate setting allows for those less confident performers to feel more comfortable in their singing and eventually move onto principal roles in bigger shows. You never know, any Bar Night participant might just go on to be the next big star of the stage! With a range of performers and songs, you are sure to find something you like in these bar nights.

The Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society's Freshers Musical is the perfect way to support musical theatre newbies in Cambridge. Each year, a group of musical theatre freshers come together in their first term and put on a student-written musical with the help and oversight of the student musical theatre community. A show full of fresh, new talent and enthusiastic musical theatre freshers, it is not one to be missed on the CUMTS calendar. Come and show your support for the next musical theatre generation!

Let the Impronauts entertain you with Quickfire: an hour and a half of improvised comedy, sure to set the house on fire! Watch as Cambridge's best-loved improvised comedy troupe set the ADC Bar ablaze with a variety of hilarious scenes, games, and songs all completely made up on the spot. Each Quickfire is based on audience suggestions, so no two shows are ever the same! So get ready to ignite your humour and put our improvisers in the hot-seat with your suggestions. No script. No rehearsals. No problem.

Today this could be the greatest day of our lives. Five teenage girls. One unforgettable concert. It’s 1992 and best friends Rachel, Heather, Zoe, Claire and Debbie are united by their love of a chart-topping boy band. Through shared dreams, first loves and endless devotion to their idols, the girls form a friendship that feels unbreakable. Twenty-five years later, the women are living very different lives, and an unexpected reunion brings them back together, forcing them to confront the past and the moment that changed everything. As old friendships are rekindled and long-buried emotions resurface, can they rediscover the bond that once defined them and find strength in each other once more? Featuring more than 15 of Take That’s greatest hits including Never Forget, Shine and Relight My Fire, The Band is a heartfelt celebration of friendship, resilience and the power of music to connect us across the years.

In this thrilling multi-award winning play, based on Dan Brown’s bestselling international phenomenon, Professor Robert Langdon is called to the Louvre in the dead of night, where he unwittingly becomes the center of a murder investigation. When cryptologist Sophie Neveu arrives at the scene, she alerts Robert that, not only is he being asked to solve the crime, he is also the prime suspect. Soon, they are in a race against time to clear Robert’s name and decipher a labyrinthine code before a shocking historical secret is lost forever. The Da Vinci Code comes to life at the ADC Theatre as this year's CUADC Freshers’ Play - a week of productions put on entirely by students new to the Cambridge theatre scene.

The Nazis of the 1930s, a boxing ring in the 1980s, and a week in 2027 - Arturo Ui rises and writhes in this new adaptation of Brecht’s ever-timely and ever-menacing 1941 allegorical masterpiece. Set in an American boxing gym, Arturo Ui and his gang gain power over the city and its local vegetable trade through sordid corruption and chilling violence. Amid the chaos, vegetable-wielding gangsters and sleazy boxing coaches are caught in a half-comic, half-horrifying satire on Hitler and the Nazi elite’s rise to the top. Does it all sound a little too familiar? Haven’t we been here before? Let the déjà-vu take hold; seventy years on from Bertolt Brecht’s death, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui remains in dire need of resisting.

A storm has hit the ADC, and we’re ready to take you to Oz with... The Wiz! When Dorothy crash lands in the fantastical land of Oz, she uncovers a world unlike her home in Kansas. With no way home, the good witch Addaperle sends her on a journey along the yellow brick road to meet The Wiz, who has powers like no other, and can send her home. Making friends along the way, they fight off mystical tribes, hallucinogenic poppies and the most evil witch in the land... Evillene. But just as all seems lost, Dorothy and her friends learn that they have had all they need inside of them the entire time. This joyous adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s classic tale is bound to leave your feet tapping, and put a song in your heart. Ease on Down the Road to the ADC this November!

What happens when love turns to grief? Six people, tied by their family bond, must navigate the interpersonal tensions and individual aspirations that threaten to tear them apart. "Things I Know To Be True is about love in many of its forms. At times comforting and supportive. At others suffocating and destructive. But always love." -- Scott Graham, Artistic Director for Frantic Assembly. Things I Know to be True is a strikingly honest play about life's defining moments and the sacrifices that love drives us to make.

When Footlight Tom Sweeney enters a room, all he wants to do is make everyone in it happy, and not hate him. As the room gets bigger, this gets more difficult. Join Tom in one of his biggest rooms yet and be delighted by his desperate attempts to make you smile, giggle, and even laugh. He'll tell little jokes, he'll pull silly faces, he'll stomp about the stage and talk about being from Leeds a bit too much considering he's losing the accent. All he wants to do is make you happy for an hour; surely that's something you want?

"Haven’t you learned to think for yourself? I believe in the individual. Look at me." It's the middle of the high-flying, go-getting 80s, in Thatcher-era England. Marlene has just been made managing director of Top Girls employment agency, but with no friends to speak of, and a past she has forgotten, the guests at Marlene's party are a dissonant collection of famous women from history. Soon Marlene discovers that life above the glass-ceiling is not all it is cracked up to be. Caryl Churchill's celebrated, bold, searing comedy is a dazzling mix of time-bending narratives and sharp dialogue that explores the conflict between ambition, success and family that women still face today.

Poet, entertainer and three-time national slam winner Jude Simpson presents a festive version of the performance that was nominated for Best Kids Show at Leicester Comedy Festival 2026. “A Noise Annoys at Christmas” is crammed full of playful poetry, silly songs and joyful interaction. From a rap about wrapping, to imagining how noisy that original “silent” night must have been, this show will engage children with the spoken and written word, and leave them full of joy at the possibilities of language. “Funny, sharp and a terrific performer. She needs to be seen and heard wherever possible.” - Michael Rosen

Acclaimed local spoken word artist Jude Simpson brings a wordplay-filled cabaret to the ADC bar. Expect festive frolics, songs full of christmassy cheer and poetic playfulness, with a vibe that will range from the raucous to the tenderly thoughtful. Jude has won three national poetry slams, and her family show “A Noise Annoys” was nominated for Best Kids Show at Leicester Comedy Festival 2026. She has performed at theatres, festivals and community venues around the UK, including Glastonbury, Greenbelt, Edinburgh Festival, Cheltenham Lit Fest, Cambridge Junction, and Hereford Courtyard. The perfect way to warm up your souls for the festive season.

Waking up at 3am for a get-in. Dressing up as anthropomorphic animals in 33 degree heat. Doing laundry together at 2am and vacuuming the steps of the ADC at 4am. In this essay - written backstage before the show - Ella, Olivia, and Zaria will analyse how many hours were put into their English degrees versus how many in the ADC (or are we not supposed to start like that anymore...?) With music from RENT, Dear Evan Hansen, Death Becomes Her and Hadestown - we’re pulling out all the stops (and probably also pulling a muscle or two) for one night, and one night only!