Jude Simpson's Poetic Christmas Cabaret

Jude Simpson brings her Poetic Christmas Cabaret to the ADC Bar on Friday 18 December, a night of festive songs and poetry. It's a cabaret in the proper sense — a mix of spoken word and music rather than just one or the other — and it's built around her particular way with wordplay.

Simpson is a local spoken word artist who's won three national poetry slams, and she's spent the last few years working across the UK. She's performed at Glastonbury, Greenbelt, the Edinburgh Festival, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Cambridge Junction and Hereford Courtyard. This is a solo show, so the whole thing rests on her voice and her writing.

She doesn't just do the adult stage, either. Her family show A Noise Annoys was nominated for Best Kids Show at the Leicester Comedy Festival 2026, so she's used to writing for different rooms. The Poetic Christmas Cabaret is for ages 16 and over, which puts it firmly in the adult bracket, and it's her own name on the bill.

The venue is the ADC Bar, part of the ADC Theatre on Park Street. It's Britain's oldest university playhouse, run by the University of Cambridge, and plays have been staged there since 1855, when the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club first met in the back room of the Hoop Inn. The cabaret starts at 7:45pm, and tickets are £7-£9.