Hello ADC - my, but you've changed!

We have finished performing in London. It's a big, noisy city and the Piccadilly line doesn't work properly. The next leg of the tour involves a single night at the ADC, Cambridge's student-run theatre.

The ADC has just been refurbished - I cycle past it on my way to work and it's all shiny and new looking.

It's a bit sad, really. Jolly exciting, of course, for those fresh-faced youngsters getting their first taste of theatre in it; but in the process of making it look all shiny and new, they've somehow painted over rather a lot of its charm. Not to mention the big lion on the side of the building (VERY upsetting).

This is, I suppose, just the logical conclusion of a process which began when they got rid of the old bar. The lovely, creaky ADC bar where you could almost smell the Griff Rhys Jones. At an ADC party in the old bar, you really didn't know what was going to happen - what drink you'd end up being served, who might catch fire, where you'd wake up...

The new (and shiny) bar has a sterile feel to it, which says "it's okay! heh heh! you'll get what you order, fires will only happen to Footlights alumni, and you'll wake up in bed! Your bed! On your own!"

(That's what it always said to me, at any rate.)

I hope that the refurbishment of the theatre doesn't sterilise the student drama as well, so that there's no longer any of the really entertainingly pretentious, bizarrely thought out or simply just crap stuff to enjoy.

There was also occasionally astoundingly brilliant stuff there too. Perhaps you should pop along at 11pm on Tuesday to see what I mean.