Where do people go when the lights turn out? What about those people who aren’t tucked up in bed or out on the lash, those sleeping rough on the street or wandering through unfamiliar places at the dead of night? What if there was a place in the city, and a woman inside it, dedicated to hearing these people’s stories?

That’s the basic idea that Midnight Café grew from, but the story has changed a lot over the last year, during the process of being recorded for CamFM in January and then adapted for its CUADC-funded debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As we enter the last few days of rehearsals before the show goes up at Paradise in the Vault, I feel like it’s inevitable to get a bit reflective; to think about how the show has come along from being a random set of scribbles written on busy train journeys to a bizarre but entertaining tragicomedy made possible by the tireless efforts of the directors, Amelia and Marissa, and the incredibly talented cast members.

Midnight Café is a set of overlapping stories, concerning a bunch of loners and losers who occasionally converge in the mysterious titular café. There’s Sari, a twin with a troubled past. There’s Twells, a homeless wanderer searching for silence. And there’s Tom and Bea, two teenagers trapped in the dead-end job of selling windows door to door. All these people are allowed to drink, talk and be themselves within the walls of Midnight Café, only open between the hours of 11pm and 3am.

The show opens with an apocalyptic event and then jumps back in time to look at the stories of the characters involved in that moment. The dizzying leaps about in time and space are strung together by a set of eerie narrations, made by a waitress with a questionable grasp on sanity. It’s difficult to sum up what happens in the rest of the show without killing its atmosphere a little, so the only way to find out is to descend into the Vault and see for yourself.

Debuting with original writing at the Edinburgh Fringe has been an absolutely terrifying process and I still live in expectation of the day that I get a call from the festival runners saying that they made a huge mistake programming my show. This is just me being nervous about my writing – the actors have put a crazy amount of energy into rehearsals, and made their characters into more than I ever intended for them. Midnight Café is an ensemble piece, and so it’s allowed for powerful naturalistic actors (like Jemma Cleary) to play off against comic talents (like Rhodri Hughes) with fascinating results. Outside of rehearsals they’ve all been gloriously bonkers and fun; I think that’s a good way to deal with the play’s dark subject matter.

I don’t think I want people in the audience to come out with a tidy and clear reaction to what they’ll see. The topics that Midnight Café explores – mental health and modern loneliness – are messy and confusing, and it would be dishonest to try and project a straightforward narrative onto them. Also, shouldn’t more shows, especially at the Fringe, be weird and unusually specific? We’ve seen Shakespeare and Sophocles done a million times over, so why not go and watch some naked stand-up or a man play the bagpipes with his backside? Midnight Café can’t boast that same level of oddity, but I hope that it provides the same kind of surreal and dreamlike sensation that you would probably have if you actually visited the place.

There have been quite a few student media think-pieces that decry a lack of original playwriting at Cambridge, but frankly I don’t think it’s that big an issue. There’s a huge number of original shows going on, not just in the major theatres but in college venues, on student radio, and at events like HATCH which encourage work in development. If you want to write something, you won’t get a better opportunity to see it performed than while studying at university, and as long as you’re fully invested in your story, no matter how odd it might seem, or how scared you are that other people won’t connect with it, you’re sure to find people who are on the same wavelength. If I’ve managed to find a cast and crew committed to bringing my strange little play about a café in Milton Keynes to life, then you absolutely have a chance with your idea, and you should definitely show it to the world: because then you’ll get the chance to meet great people, and perhaps bring the things you care about most deeply into the light.

Jamie Rycroft is the writer and producer of Midnight Café, which runs from 17th-30th August (excluding 23rd) at 6:00pm (1 hour) in Paradise in the Vault.