Reading Alcott’s novel, Little Women, as a preteen, I identified most with the eldest of the March sisters, Jo. Her rejection of traditional femininity, devotion to writing, and outspoken spirit, emblematised an authenticity that remains incredibly important to me. So, as I watched last term’s rendition of this classic story at the ADC, it wasn’t just the Jo in front of me I saw, but also the Jo I had carried with me through childhood. Her ending struck the same dissonant tones as it had originally, revisiting the same discussion I’ve had many times before: why does Jo have to marry Professor Bhaer? Needless to say, the stories we grow up with never truly leave us. Rather, they’re continually revisited, returning in new forms, shaped by time and interpretation. More than just performance, theatre becomes a space where we re-experience the emotions of our former selves; where memory becomes communal, layered, and alive.

“Theatre becomes a space where we re-experience the emotions of our former selves; where memory becomes communal, layered, and alive”

This is a virtue especially of adaptation. Lent term saw an incredible production of Sondheim’s classic, Into the Woods. From Cinderella to Little Red Riding Hood, this musical intertwines familiar fairytales within a subverted ‘quest’ musical. The result is a layered collation of memory and childhood myth, playing on our expectations and revealing a deeper emotional complexity that underpins our engagement with its themes. In the preview of the ADC show, the director, Toby Trusted, told Varsity that the way this play explores its depth is “genuine” and “organic,” hoping that it would speak to others as it does for them. Their words reflect a sentiment pertinent to the medium of theatre itself: live performance manifests a dialogue between the stage and its audience, in which meaning isn’t fixed in the present moment, but reshaped through the experiences we bring with us when we watch.

As Into the Woods turned to its darker second act, this active conversation was tangible. For instance, Batya Reich played the witch with a compelling sensitivity, balancing the mystery and complexity of the misunderstood antagonist. She hovers between archetype and ambiguity, echoing the sharply defined villain figure so well known from childhood fairytales, where things are always black and white, and revealing a figure shaped by the moral nuances of the adult world. Her duality, made tangible by the stunning costume design of Edith Howe and Evie Fox-Young, unsettled the neat moral frameworks of childhood. Through this, the production reframed nostalgia, reviving the past not as it was, but refracted through memory’s shifting lens. The black-and-white distinctions of traditional fairytale morality dissolved into something unsettled, complex and vividly alive in the present.

“We come back, again and again, to this shared space of escape and enchantment”

As Easter term approaches, ADC main shows Wind in the Willows and The House at Pooh Corner promise to carry a distinctly nostalgic resonance. The gentleness of A. A. Milne’s world recalls the softness of childhood. His characters sit at the threshold between imagination and the adult world: Piglet with his small but persistent anxieties, and Eeyore, whose melancholy is both comic and quietly profound. Milne’s stories hold a particular poignancy because of their self-awareness, conscious of their own inevitable ending. As time passes, Christopher Robin grows up alongside his audience. So, the story becomes inseparable from the recognition that we have, in some sense, left it behind. Now, 100 years since Milne’s classic was originally released in 1926, his imagined world remains embedded in our collective memory, a reminder of the tenderness and transience that shape both childhood and the act of remembering it. Kenneth Grahame’s parable Wind in the Willows, first published in 1908, is equally entrancing, interlacing a gentle childhood wonder with captivating depth and substance. The echoes of Grahame’s childhood reverberate throughout the story as he, like Milne, moralises on the importance of friendship and loyalty. Succeeding generations of readers and audiences alike have found themselves drawn into its world, returning to its charm and gentle insight.

The experience of watching live theatre is never entirely self-contained; it is always bound up in memories of times we’ve encountered it before. No matter how new the scene before us, it is shaped by the traces of what we have already seen and felt. Theatre depends on this act of return, each performance resonating a little differently depending on who we are when we encounter it. We come back, again and again, to this shared space of escape and enchantment, one that echoes the imaginative worlds first discovered in childhood fairytales. We are always returning to that same feeling of wonder. This is not to say that theatre’s power lies solely in nostalgia. It’s just as capable of telling a story never heard before, of confronting us with the unfamiliar and unknown. But, there is a reason certain tales have endured across generations. Their familiarity doesn’t diminish them; rather, it invites us to re-enter their worlds, and rediscover them in a space where past and present momentarily collapse.