Stalin’s Russia: A Teenage Romcom! is something of a striking title for next week’s ADC lateshow. But this play addresses the very familiar mysteries of adolescence: am I attractive? Can the complicated passions of my friendship group be best expressed in graph form? Is it cool to iron neat creases into your own shirts? What on earth is that, and how can I find out more about it without it appearing in my Google search history?

Winner of the Footlights’ Harry Porter Prize, which is awarded annually to an hour-long comedic play, this play’s script is utterly fantastic. It pops and fizzes with humour, and is full of sly nods to a late noughties’/early ‘tens’ teenage-hood which pretty much all of the audience will be able to relate to on some level. Both the script and visual elements of the production play off both the popular media of this era, aimed at teenagers, and also off the empirical experience of extreme awkwardness, something which many Cambridge students are all too familiar with.

“A refreshing take on this genre, which isn’t just a passive and predictable watching experience.”

As in Mean Girls, which producer and writer Joe McGuchan tells me was one of the biggest inspirations for the script, the play presents us with the stock characters whom we expect in high schools, and in films, plays and books about high school: the nerdy and socially inept Minecraft fan, the unattainably perfect and distant object of affection, the socially canny ‘popular’ set who are intelligent but unbothered by schoolwork. The script recombines these characters in new and unexpected ways, resulting in a refreshing take on this genre, which isn’t just a passive and predictable watching experience.

The story of the play follows Heather (Phoebe Segal) and Matt (Ben Martineau), whom Phoebe persuades to write an extended essay on Stalin’s Russia for her A Level history in exchange for social capital. As you may have guessed, things don’t quite go to plan.

“You almost get the feeling that a teacher could walk through the door at any moment.”

The rehearsal process for this play seems to really bring out the inner 15-year-old in all of those involved. At the rehearsal that I attended, practical questions to the director and producer about avoiding anachronism within the play turn into long, nostalgic discussions about the social and cultural dynamics of our high school experiences. I find myself drawn into these as well– it’s utterly irresistible, and I get the feeling that the enthusiastic nostalgia of these discussions is exactly what seeing this play is going to be like. The cast and crew seem to bounce around the dressing room as if in a classroom at lunchtime, filled with hysterical, pent-up energy; you almost get the feeling that a teacher could walk through the door at any moment.

However, this production isn’t just a ball of vivacity jumping around the stage erratically. The actors, producer, and director Ben Spiro work through the lines of the script meticulously, paying close attention to comic timing. Spiro tells me that he developed his distinctive method of direction after taking an acting class at Harvard University during his year abroad:

“The approach we take to each scene is almost like therapy for the characters. Before we begin the scene, we work out the context in which the scene takes place, we work out the story arc of the scene, the character arc of the scene, the beats and pauses […] This script is quite character-driven, which is great, and what we’re really interested in here is character relationships and character motivation.”

Words made flesh: adapting Russia’s classics for the stage

Stalin’s Russia: A Teenage Romcom! looks set to be a brilliant piece of student-written theatre, and a hilarious exploration and subversion of the teenage rom-com genre