Theatre Guide Dog: Week 4 (Halloween Special)

Halloween, night of costumes & bawling immaturity, is made for Cambridge theatre. Nothing on this week has anything to do with it, however, so instead the Guide Dog has dressed up as the Joker. Everyone dresses up as the Joker nowadays, and the Dog wants you to feel like you’re his equal. You are not, of course, so shut up talking and listen to all of this with your eyes.

The Birthday Party 2-6th

Pinter. You know…Pinter. That playwright who won a Nobel Prize for pointedly leaving things out, like a nousless Hemingway. This is on at the Corpus Playroom at 7.30pm, and next week the late show there is more Pinter; this time Betrayal. The latter inspired a Seinfeld episode, so you may want to wait for that if you don’t want to be overloaded with bleak gimmicry. Two Pinters in two weeks may be more than you can take, but see one of them; student actors are usually better at pausing.

The Misanthrope 2-6th

Molière has been translated into every language that needs him, his comedies have made Louis Quatorze prudish and were described by Laurence Olivier as ‘funny as a baby’s open grave’. He has never before, however, been directed by DJ Piez. Go to the Fitzpatrick Theatre at Queen’s if you want to see what happens when these two meet. My prediction is that it will be exactly like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. Or in public toilets. By which I mean exciting. 7.45pm.

Journey’s End 2-6th

The ADC continues a strange tendency towards staging GCSE set texts. Rumour has it this production will incorporate members of the CU officer training corps into its curtain call. Journey’s End is a WW1 trench tragedy, wholly anti-war; the concluding moral being that, when forced to serve, you should do so in order to prevent the task being passed to someone else. Either the CUOTC have been impressively pranked or this production has corrupted RC Sherriff’s text into ‘Our Boys’-style tubthumping. Either would be interesting, though not pleasant, to behold. 7.45pm.

Mirror 2-6th

New writing: ‘An empty, windowless room is where the human forms of Rape, Faith and Pain find themselves, cut off and without recollection of their arrival’. And there was that idiot Guide Dog thinking there was nothing Halloweeny on this week. Corpus Playroom at 9pm.

Over and Out 3-6th

More new writing: ‘For the characters in this play, the presence – or absence – of the right words can be life-changing’. If this is bad every review will do a joke about the right words being absent. If it’s good the reviewer will have to be more inventive, so here’s hoping. Fitzpatrick Theatre at Queen’s, 11pm.

Soundtrack to your Life 3-6th

An imaginative concept – a collection of writers, directors & actors craft a collection of scenes, each  based on a piece of music. Then you watch the whole lot of them. This could make several of your senses either very happy or very sad. In all likelihood it will probably be that dread phrase, a Mixed Bag. But then, so is every Smoker ever, and you still go to them don’t you, you three-star sap? ADC at 11pm.