Ruckus in the Garden: Notes on Adolescence, Ambition, and the Art of Beginning

By Felicia Lorena Klassen, Edited by Polly Bigham

A Fresher’s Play is never just a play. It is a first attempt: protected, provisional, and held to a gentler standard than the rest of Cambridge theatre. On Tuesday 18th November, when Ruckus in the Garden opened at the Corpus Playroom, that sense of beginning was unmistakable. The cast of first-years threw themselves into David Farr’s world of rival schools, swapped identities, and teenagers trying on versions of themselves with the urgency of people stepping onto a stage still new to them. 

Just before the house opened for the final performance, I sat down with the creative team in the Corpus Playroom – the seats empty, props already set, and nothing yet in motion. It’s a vantage you rarely get: the threshold between rehearsal and performance, the quiet before the last iteration of a show. Listening to them describe the week’s process reframed how I’d been watching the production, not as a single event but as something evolving night by night. 

As the week unfolded, I kept circling the same question: what does it mean to see both an opening night and a closing one? To see a room transform into the world of the play, a cast find its footing, and the themes of envy, visibility, and belonging gradually form. I returned four days later not for a verdict, but to understand how the production itself might change – how a young show, given space to experiment, might meet the story it is telling. 

The plot moves quickly. Two schools, posh St Nectan’s and underfunded Riverdale, collide on an ill-fated school trip to the manicured garden of Cecil Fortescue. What begins as rivalry becomes a chain of misunderstandings, insults, identity swaps, and the occasional romantic disaster. The play threads several tensions through its dialogue: class, beauty, desirability, the fear of not being seen. Riverdale’s self-appointed mediator Stanley (Gabriel Castelli) voices his frustration bluntly – “We are chavs and sluts. We can only express ourselves through the fist” – while Cath’s (Orbit Vathanan) confession, “I am invisible […] 100% see-through,” strikes a quieter nerve. Tamsen’s (Caitlin Bulman) exasperation over being constantly objectified – “I’d love not to be gorgeous […] maybe then I wouldn’t be treated like such a trophy princess”– sits in sharp contrast with Cath’s simple longing to be noticed. And when Cath mocks the council’s belief that sending Riverdale on an “improving experience” will make them “all come out playing the violin”, the class commentary slips in with an almost throwaway sharpness. These lines capture the overlapping discomforts of adolescence: being judged for how you look, overlooked by the person you want to impress, and slotted into roles you never chose – constantly being unsure whether you’re being looked at or looked down on.

Yet none of this becomes overbearing. When I spoke with director Daniella Adetoye before the closing performance, she told me: “What really stood out to me was how much comedy is foregrounded. Those serious topics are mentioned in sometimes joking ways, without being overly preachy about it.” And watching both nights showed exactly that: the production lets its themes emerge lightly – through jokes, scuffles, and side-eye glances. 

The staging, designed by Cornelia Hammond, is deceptively simple: a bench, a chair, scattered mini Cupids (thirty of them, according to the cast), and lighting by Elijah Denning split into pinks and greens that echo the division between the schools. The Corpus Playroom, long, narrow and exposed on two sides, demands a different kind of performance. When I asked Assistant Director J.R. Poon about this, she explained that in rehearsals they couldn’t replicate the sensation of an audience less than a metre away: “Because of the way the Playroom is shaped […] they acknowledge everyone in the audience. That couldn’t happen before opening night.” And it is true: on the first night, the cast seemed aware of the space; by the last, they owned it. Stanley even slipped into an empty seat in the front row mid-scene, continuing his dialogue from among us, turning the room itself into a character. 

The cast’s ease with the space mirrors how quickly they became an ensemble. Everyone involved is a fresher, which can be liberating or terrifying depending on the day. “It’s so easy to be intimidated by people who seem like they know what they’re doing”, actor Fianaid Neill (Maisy) admitted, “but then you remember we’re all first years […] you can trust people and just have a bit of fun with it.” The rehearsal process was, as she put it, “really fast”, and yet by closing night the cast moved with the rhythm of people who had known each other far longer than a few weeks. Before the final show, I spent some time with them in the Green Room – Fianaid doing her makeup in the mirror while others tossed a ball around and a few caught up on their day. Being in that space made the onstage chemistry later unsurprising. This was discernible in the glances exchanged across the stage, in the warmups Fianaid “didn’t really like” at first but now has grown fond of, and in the scenes that breathed differently because someone dared to try something new. 

Fianaid’s own performance as Maisy is a small study in the joy of transformation. She auditioned in her Derry accent, unsure how the team would imagine the character. At the read-through, she asked, “Can I do an English accent?” and something clicked. “It helps me get into character. As soon as I get on stage, […] I’m her”, she said. “When I’m doing her voice, it helps me think in her mind – the way she would react, not the way I would react.” Her observation pointed to something central in the play: the way teenagers shift between versions of themselves depending on who is watching. The way the script asks characters to try on identities until something fits. The way theatre lets you inhabit someone else, only to learn something sharper about yourself. “It’s invigorating”, she told me. “You get to play with someone else […] the choices you make – they’re your own. Though I personally wouldn’t be caught dead kissing someone in a bush on a school trip.”

Over time, the show accumulated new choices. Daniella told me that each performance became a small test: “We could see, oh they laughed at that – keep it.” By the final evening, the pacing had sharpened, the silences carried more weight, and the production’s palette had become more cohesive. When the identity-swapped pair return to themselves – “Now Cath be Cath and Tam be Tam again” – the two schools stand together in a single warm light. Producer Lulu Cavicchi told me that this was her favourite moment: “Everyone stands, almost like frozen in a tableau […] it gets at the theme of the show that the schools set down their peace and overcome their differences. It’s lovely seeing the whole cast on stage […] we did that!” It is a clear visual summation of what Ruckus in the Garden is working toward. 

“What should an audience carry home?” I asked. Daniella didn’t hesitate: “Hope. Especially today, with so much division […] I think there’s hope in them coming together.” Onstage, that shows up in the small pivots – two characters reading Middlemarch in a bush instead of fighting, teenagers recognising each other beyond stereotype, a cast increasingly locking into the same rhythm as the week goes on. 

On closing night, stepping out into the cold, I remembered Fianaid’s words: “I’ll be sad when it’s done […] but it feels natural – the term is ending.” A short run, a brief world, a swift creation. Fresher’s Plays aren’t meant to be definitive; they are introductions. Seeing both nights, speaking with the cast, and sitting in the empty Playroom with the creative team made that clearer than any single performance could. These shows aren’t final statements; they are beginnings, with their own momentum. This production emerged as exactly that: a confident first step, a bright ensemble forming, a room learning how to hold them, and a play that leaves one question hanging – what might they do next?

In retrospect it isn’t the jokes alone (though there were plenty, and well delivered) or the precision of the staging that stays with me from this production. It is the speed with which the show established its own world. Ruckus in the Garden didn’t need spectacle to work; it had timing, clarity, and a cast that knew how to hold a room. Perhaps that is the real achievement of these plays: not polish, but the clear sense of a production finding its form in real time. And really, what more could you ask of a  Fresher’s Play than that?