Pilgrims and Boys arrive at the ADC

Dramatised and adapted by Mike Poulton, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales offers a humours and familiar collection of characters. Together they aim not for divinity but debauchery. They seek to entertain an audience – the very essence of the Tales. As the pilgrimage was arranged, the Host proposed a competition: whoever tells the tale “of best sentence and moost solas” shall dine at the expense of the other pilgrims. What followed was one of the finest and best-known collections of stories ever known in the English language.

Richard Bates of the ADC Theatre said “I'm personally very excited about The Canterbury Tales as it brings a style of theatre to the ADC stage which we don't usually see in our 7.45pm mainshows -combining drama, music and puppetry in innovative ways to breathe new life and a real sense of fun into these old tales.”

The pilgrimage begins 7 February to 11 February at 7.45pm.

The Boys in the Band premiered off-Broadway to ecstatic reviews on 14 April 1968. It was the first play to openly portray gay men, and was performed only a few blocks away on the night of the Stonewall Riots of ’69 which is often seen as the first fight-back against the NYPD discriminating against sexual minorities. The Boys in the Band represents a landmark feat that helped combat the stigma of homosexuality in an era before Gay Pride parades that are now common place throughout Europe and North America.

Richard Bates adds, “The Boys in the Band was a very important play for gay people in the 1960s, and was later made into a successful film. The stage version is very rarely performed outside of the US, so we are immensely proud to host this production of such a thought-provoking work.”

The Boys in the Band makes its Cambridge debut at the ADC Theatre 14 February to 18 February at 7.45pm. For tickets and other enquiries, please contact the ADC on 01223 300 085.