When people hear about '18th century novels', thoughts of Samuel Richardson's arduous epistolary novels can evoke a sense of dread (one may begin to yawn uncontrollably just thinking about tackling such texts or watching respective adaptations). However, Lawrence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is far detached from Richardson's work. It is a novel which is often as crude as it is innovative; Will Dalrymple's invitation asks us to"revel in the sex, the scandal, the song, the dance, the love, the lies and that bit where he gets his thingy trapped in a sash window." His stage adaptation is certainly an ambitious one, and one which he believes is going to be a truly unique experience for Cambridge theatre.

What challenges did you face adapting an 18th century novel?

The difficulty in adapting any book is that you need to make sure that the audience won’t need to have read the original book, which with a book like this is more difficult than you’d imagine! In general the challenge lay not in adapting ‘an’ 18th Century novel, but adapting this 18th century novel. Writers have, to a certain extent, have always found the same things funny. Knob gags are in no way modern, just as prudishness is in no way old fashioned. Tristram Shandy is as funny now as it was then. The challenge lay in trying to do what the book did to prose – namely, fuck around with it – to the theatre, and so the adapting process became a process of translation. Jokes that were funny precisely because they are splayed out across a page have to be funny because they’re being played out across a stage.

Another challenge that I imagine anyone who adapts someone else’s work encounters is resisting the urge to be too reverential to the original text. Laurence Sterne was a wickedly funny, subversive man, and I had to remind myself that so long as my subversions of the text were funny and tonally consistent (though the tone of Tristram Shandy is fed by the novel’s inconsistency), I needn’t feel bad about playing around with the source material. As such, there are big sections of the play that simply aren’t in the book. These, however, are necessary so as to bring out what is so brilliant about the bits that are in the book, which I guess is why people have for so long felt the need to adapt others’ work in the first place.

What have been the particular challenges of getting this show onto the stage?

Our incredibly resourceful crew have had to realise what is in essence Main show ambition in a Late show slot, which I think has been the most difficult thing of all. My poor producer, Mr Jamie Fenton and the rest of the prod team despaired when I asked for a huge piece of scenery that is used for roughly 20 seconds. Alice, our superb costume designer, slammed the script shut in woe when she read "Horse Costume" (on top of the 10 others she has had to procure) in the stage directions! It’s a demanding script, let’s put it that way. Casting is of course always difficult because Cambridge has such an enormous pool of acting talent, but our cast, led by the extraordinary Tim Atkin (who wowed everyone as Falstaff last term) have been nothing but hilarious and dedicated from start to finish… Though you’d be surprised how few actors in Cambridge can do a passable Northern accent!

You have taken this show from the page to the stage, adapting and directing, where next for you?

To bed and to the library to catch up on all the work I’ve let build up. Keep your eye on Pembroke New Cellars, though. Methinks murder is a’coming (in the form of a sketch show in week 7). I’d like to write a sequel to Tristram Shandy (and use all of the bits of the book I didn’t use this time around) but probably won’t… Who knows? We’ll see.

Anything else you’re looking forward to this term?

Natalie Reeve, who plays Susannah and knows a frankly alarming amount about the Romantic poets, has a Corpus one night stand on the 26th of October about Mary Shelley and her sister Claire – given that she is one of the most imaginative and professional thesps in Cambridge I’m very excited about it indeed! Also, Sitcom: A Sitcom got everyone talking last term if I remember rightly, and I’m interested to see whether Quinoa, their new Pembroke sketch show will do too.

You must have had some funny moments with so many comedic actors and actresses in one show, any particularly funny anecdotes?

Ah, now for this I must hand over to Robert Eyers, who plays Tristram’s Uncle Toby…

Robert:  “During one of our rehearsals, Megan - who plays Bridget, a Shandy maid - managed to get her foot stuck in a rabbit hole. This, you understand, was not on the ADC Stage (surprisingly lacking in rabbit holes). We were rehearsing in a small wooded area to the south of Cambridge, in a vain attempt to imbue our craft with the Yorkshire vibe. Quick as a flash I improvised what has to be - and I don’t say this lightly - one of the finest puns of my punning career. “Megan,” quoth I. “Megan, you better not make a rabbit of this tomfoolery.” In hindsight, she was never going to find it bunny. It just made her hopping mad. She struggles to keep her hare on at the best of times. HOW WE LAUGHED.”

I wasn’t there for that rehearsal.

How would you sell this production to theatre audiences?

I hope that this adaptation shares two huge selling points with the original novel: it’s funny and there is nothing else like it. Never I think has a book done (or at least tried to do) so many things at once, simply because the existence of paper and ink allowed it to. This play makes a conscious effort to use as much of the theatre as it can in ways that would occur to no one but Tristram Shandy. To a large extent I think theatre audiences in Cambridge know each term what they’re getting – a Shakespeare, a Greek Tragedy, Smokers, Pantos, Musicals. This is what I find so exciting about this show: it goes in so many directions and defies so many lessons that directors and producers have learnt the hard way that even people who have read the book have no idea what they’re in for. ‘An evening at the theatre like no other’; what could be more exciting than that?

Tristram Shandy: Live at The ADC! will run from Wed 21 - Sat 24 October 2015 at 11.00pm at the ADC.