- November 2024
What exactly is the difference between a medieval monk and a modern-day academic? ...Shockingly, nothing. Or at least that's the conclusion Mary, a troubled new student at Cambridge University, has come to after a shockingly traumatic first few weeks of term.
Raunchy, irreverent, and biblically brilliant, "Me and My Year of Casual 'Monasticism'" invites audiences to question if they really are both a madonna AND a whore.
- November 2024
This freshers' pantomime brings a ~fresh(ers)~ twist to The Wizard of Oz, as we follow Dorothy Gale - a Northern working-class girl who dreams of going to uni down south, 'somewhere over the Midlands'. Whisked away by a cyclone (thanks global warming!) to the land of Oz, she travels to the Emerald City of Cambridge and discovers university isn’t quite the fairy tale she imagined...
When tasked by the Wizard of Oz - the mysterious Vice-Chancellor who rules Cambridge - to defeat the Wicked Witch of the Southwest at her second home in Cornwall, Dorothy sets out with her friends - a brainless Scarecrow, a heartless Tin Man, and the Cowardly Bear - to navigate a strange and mysterious land: the South, following the Yellow Brick Railway Line (or rail replacement service!) wherever she goes.
Packed with gags, audience interaction, and relatable themes of belonging and self-discovery, this panto reminds us all that it’s okay to feel out of place. With both snarky satire and heartfelt moments, The Wizard of Oz is a celebration of the freshers' experience - there’s truly no place like home ("Oh, yes there is!").
- November 2024
‘…but I am a blazon. I would be on fire so to know I am whole.’
This psychological horror-comedy balances the levity of farcical delusion with the ground shaking impact of psychosis on perceived reality, truth and what it means to love. Fluctuating between scenes in an imagined church council and Lynchian arguments behind curtains, we see the story of Anthony: a man circling between derealisation and disembodiment in the face of trauma. Folie Circulaire is a genre-challenging exploration of self-destruction which questions whether mental illness can ever exonerate abuse.
- November 2024
In the last Pembroke Players Comedy event of this turn, it's another classic stand-up night!
- November 2024
'Because the stories we tell ourselves about what we do and what happens to us - that's the only truth that matters. That's the only thing we do know.'
Mind: The Gap follows Murph and Niamh during the aftermath of a car crash which killed the driver, their friend Neil, after his drink was tampered with on a night out. Suffering with memory loss linked to the crash, Murph grapples with his potential responsibility for Neil's death, clashing with his internal monologue, Frank, who strongly believes Murph to be innocent.
However, on meeting Cait - a mysterious commuter with a hauntingly familiar background - Murph becomes mistrustful of both Frank and Niamh's versions of events. As the boundary between Murph's mind and the outside world becomes less certain, he must remember the story behind how Neil died - and perhaps more crucially, why - before the truth is rewritten for him.
- November 2024
“We are only what we always were but naked now.”
A dramatized and partially fictionalised story of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. John Proctor, a farmer, and his wife Elizabeth are a troubled couple, haunted by Proctor's past affair with Abigail Williams, who still harbours feelings for him. Reverend Hale is called upon to investigate the claims of witchcraft. Proctor struggles with his guilt over his affair and his desire to protect his wife and the truth.
In a town crying witchcraft, Proctor must make a choice between integrity and self-preservation.
- November 2024
The Bootleg Lecture Series is a very silly spin on the scourge that plagues every uni student: back-to-back lectures. We’re hosting comedians to present mock lectures on any topic they choose - whether that is a particularly humorous element of their degree or another inane topic of their choosing.
As we are based in Pembroke (obviously), we are also very lucky to have access to our new auditorium that we hope to fill with 24 carat comedic gold. We invite you to have fun with this concept and take it to whatever extremes you see fit. Think of it as a big ol’ smoker with PowerPoints and a kind of structure.
We are very happy to announce that this event will also be in partnership with The Brain Tumour Charity.
- November 2024
Women aren't funny - discuss.
- October–November 2024
Othello is a play of many complexities and layers. A play that tests the capacities individuals will go to upkeep their reputation and external image in society. The setting of Pembroke Chapel (never been performed in before) and it's black and white flooring, shows the mixing of cultures in a society in which race never does blur into one because of societal expectations. Set against the backdrop of the glitz and glamour of the 1920s, this interpretation of Shakespeare's much loved tragedy highlights the superficiality of society.
Charity show for UNICEF Gaza
- October–November 2024
Three Men in a Boat is a comedy by Clive Francis adapted for the stage from the 19th century novel by Jerome K. Jerome.
Three friends; Jerome, Harris and George (and their dog) try to escape the dullness of London by taking a trip along the river Thames after discussing all the possible illnesses they have acquired from working too hard (or not enough) and drinking too much (or too little).
They are faced with all the classic perils of a holiday – not knowing where to moor the titular boat, opening pineapple cans with a brick, getting caught in the rain and sharing beds - or all cosily sleeping on the floor in their case. All of this, of course, leads to hilarious mishaps and witty chaos during their meandering along the river. Along the way, they tell stories about the places they visit, often leading to digressions, funny anecdotes and all of them teasing each other.
The show pokes fun at the stereotypical British high society of late 1800s, with similar jokes and comedy to Oscar Wilde, but less known and even more applicable in its humour and storytelling to a modern audience. It is a comedy about the camaraderie of youth, the absurdity of existence, comic songs, and misadventures.
- October 2024
Stand-up. It's in New Cellars. Yay.
- March 2024
Psychologists say that inside everyone is a child screaming out to be loved. But all this adult child screams for is a cheap double, a wank, and, if the cards are in her favour, to not fall asleep in front of the TV. Being a woman in your mid-twenties is hard, being an educated, underpaid part-time waitress and self-confessed terminal layabout is - well, not harder, but that hasn’t stopped Cass, our protagonist, from whining on about it. Georgie, long-term best friend and begrudging roommate, is increasingly keen for Cass to do something with her life (or at least start paying her half of the rent), as the audience is jettisoned through a lush pastiche of snapshots that every young twenty-something can relate to - botched job interviews, unrequited love, indiscriminate public acts of violence, the etiquette of sharing Class-B drugs, and a yearning for a childhood innocence you can’t quite ever return to. In a tale brimming with Y2K nostalgia for the faraway bliss of Saturday morning cartoons, fried finger-food, and a world where your biggest fear is simply skinning your knees on the playground, join Cass as she learns that, kicking and screaming, someday we’ve all got to grow up.
- March 2024
"And, you know what? There will come a day when you’ve holed yourself so deep into your letters that not even we’ll be able to find your way out for you!."
Everyone knows Jane Austen. Ever winning the race of Britain's favourite female writers, her wit and humour and wisdom in all matters of society and romance seem to know no bounds, as charisma flows from her every word.
And everyone knows a 'Jane'. Everyone has a favourite, yet-to-be-prolific, yet-to-write-anything author, constantly struggling with writer's block, mental blocks, and the eternal romantic cockblock of 'far too high standards'.
And everyone knows they would never want to be 'Jane'.
Faced with constant scrutiny in the polite society of 1800s Bath and the painful flashbacks to her romantic failings, Jane begins to barricade herself into her own mind, a barricade which can only be pierced by the written word.
Enter Emma. Emma Watson. The heroine of Jane's latest scrawlings and now also the heroine of Jane's own life.
With Emma as her increasingly constant friend, saviour, and comforter, Jane's real, past, and fictional worlds begin to blur, and the worry grows whether she will ever find her way back to the present.
- February 2024
Death. It's everywhere. Especially in Victorian London. Especially if you run a funeral business. And especially if you're Etheridge, an undertaker whose long-time business partner has just kicked the bucket. Now, commissions are piling up: snobbish families, oedipal complexes, double lives, truant vicars, ferrets, raving ghosts, and a surprise christening. All these end up on Etheridge's walnut counter. And all within the space of an hour.
Watch Etheridge try to squeeze every penny he can from this unrelenting procession of absurdity, lurching between slapstick, surrealism, and cynicism. It's an original student-written comedy show that will have you dying of laughter (or cholera, or old age, or food poisoning, or a freak radish accident).
Last Post - Benboncan on Freesound
- February 2024
There were three people in my marriage… Three people and twelve legs.
Professor George Grey is world-renowned for her pioneering research into octopus intelligence. Recently bereaved, her closest relationship these days is with her research subject, Frances, who resides in a large, purpose-built tank in George’s campus accommodation.
But when ambitious anthropologist Harry enters her life, his breathtaking new theory threatens to tear her world apart in more ways than one…
Octopolis is a fascinating and funny exploration of love, grief, and what makes us human.
- February 2024
Pigs is a comedy night like no other.
Expect the weird and wonderful in this bonkers one-night variety night. Come meet the Pigs.
- February 2024
The world is teetering on the brink of survival. In order to adequately ready ourselves for the end-times we’ve asked our top boffins/sketch comedians to forecast the most likely scenarios for the destruction of the world. Whether it’s the inevitable uprising of smart fridges, the accidental self-nuking of the United States when they bomb the wrong Georgia or forgetting to wash the milk bottle out before putting it in the recycling we’re preparing for all eventualities.
- February 2024
She may be dead and buried in the ground. She may be bathing and sleeping no more. But she lived a complicated life. And this is her story.
Once, she was an engineer, selling her mind for everything and earning nothing; now, she sells her body, working on her own terms. Once, she had a family, with children and grandchildren; now, they’ve all fallen apart. Once, she had a caring friend; now, even she’s abandoned her. Someday, they will forgive each other and remember her story, but only once that story has been told - when she’s dead and buried beneath her willow tree.
- November 2023
You are a singular stroke of a letter in a word of the great Epic of these Crusades. Your rebellion will be counted as a tremor in the hand of a chronicler. The story has already started; This tale must be written. Do not presume to have a say in it.
A historical fiction drama split between the modern day and medieval crusades, 'Negotiating with the Dead' follows an archaeological team discovering ‘The Templar’s Cross’, a fictional medieval relic supposedly as famous as the Holy Grail. It is a discovery which the archaeologists have dedicated their lives to finding, and now, one archaeologist, Florine, has begun to hallucinate the Crusaders who once searched for the same relic – as she does, the play devolves into an exploration of how faith can be manipulated by corrupt figures for political and personal goals (e.g. expansion of empire, war, power, greed) and how this behaviour is almost normalised in religious institutions.
Winner of the Pembroke Player's Playwriting Competition 2023.
- November 2023
“I wish I had no love in me at all so I could better bear the things that need doing. I hate being held back and still, still I’m mourning the past.”
The early twentieth century.
Sophie has created a life for herself in a new country. When Jim, the younger brother she left as a boy, makes the same journey to come live with her, the siblings must renegotiate their relationship and the political tensions threatening to overwhelm their two-bedroom flat. At turns witty, tender, and thoughtful, this two-hander asks what happens when the people we love are too familiar and too strange, and how the fight for one home – family, community, or place – can complicate another.
- November 2023
The Pembroke Players' Freshers Panto returns again with an all new cast, crew and script! Come down to New Cellars for a rip-roaring Bridgemas special, following Peter Pan-tomime as he has to learn to embrace the panto spirit and save Cambridge from some malevolent rowers in the process!
- November 2023
“I’ll tell you what love is. Love is a precious thread you lose when you start to think. Love is a wide wide field of utter purity and it doesn’t exist - beds and carpets of snow flowers, drift stars of innocence, original light, embryonic sun, planet of lucid crystals, bruises like a virgin to the fumbling human senses, isn’t there.”
We are putting together a pastiche of Jeff Nuttall’s performance scripts, a collection of experimental, surrealist and expressionist writing which, in the author’s own words, tries to ‘punch holes in reality by weaving fiction and absurdity into the patterns of lives of unsuspecting citizens’. Comedy, farce, the ideas of Strindberg and Artaud, Tzara and the Absurdists, are all present, but the poetry, the humour, the sex
and outrage, the sense of unreality and fright are all reborn in the corporeal, graphic expression of Nuttall’s text. His writing turns inward, towards the complexity and disposability of the human condition, and how this in turn can be wielded against the authority of the powers that be.
- November 2023
AFTER A SUCCESSFUL OFF-WEST END DEBUT, GASLIGHT IS COMING TO CAMBRIDGE!
What would happen if we lived in a world where life-threatening physical wounds were treated as dismissible?
'Gaslight' is an Off-West End Award nominated play by Shaira Berg that delves into the devastating psychological impact of sexual assault and the struggle of victims to receive support. Scarlet, a university student in a seemingly loving relationship, is surrounded by toxic friends.
After a traumatic incident, she is plagued by a mysterious expanding physical wound that nobody takes seriously. As she tries to get help, she is met with disbelief, betrayal and apathy. Scarlet's journey highlights the impact of traumatic experiences on mental health, relationships and everyday life.
'Gaslight' is a powerful commentary on society's attitudes towards sexual assault and the importance of believing survivors.
'A brilliant and harrowing play that will stay with me for a long time...', 'Be prepared for the lasting impact this will have on you. You have been warned...' ★★★★★ - The Tab
- October 2023
Summer with Monika is an exploration of what it means to love, be loved and subsequently experience the loss that was in some ways inevitable, but no less painful.
- October 2023
"This is a true story and it's a love story. This is our love story. And the first thing I want to tell you is this: love is not a cast-iron set of symptoms. Love is whatever you feel it to be."
Blink is the story of Jonah and Sophie, two introverts thrown together by grief and fate. Newly arrived in a city too busy to notice them, they embark on a heartfelt romance without ever exchanging a word. Will their relationship rescue them from loneliness or are their scars too deep to heal?
A sweet, off-beat romantic comedy from multi-award-winning playwright Phil Porter.
- October 2023
The Pembroke Players regularly occurring comedy nights hosted in the beautiful New Cellars.
- August 2023
Alix is in their mid-twenties and, at first sight, full of the joys of life with flatmate Jan. But the cracks quickly start to show, and they get wider, and darker. A turbulent relationship with a beautiful stranger frames 6 months of their life, triggering drastic career changes and relapses into depression and substance abuse. ‘Undoubtedly tragic, [...] but so joyous in its raw depiction of emotion’ (The Tab), it’s a portrait of a modern, queer woman’s descent into despair. Dazzling premiered in March to a sold-out run in Cambridge. ‘A stunning production that I could not recommend enough’ ***** (The Tab)
- June 2023
‘Last Three Words’ begins with two characters on stage: One and Two. One has a gun pointed towards Two’s head, and after counting words and syllables, and discussing whether the sun has died, they slowly realise they are both stuck in a play. As Two laments reality, and One believes he’s dead, another character enters the stage: Four, the lighting and sound technician. Four gives One and Two one crucial piece of information: they missed their cue.
‘Last Three Words’ is an absurd play, satirising absurdism while, crucially, embracing themes of metatheatre and double act comedy. A three hander, the play is designed to be acted by whoever and wherever and bridges the gap between ‘cast’ and ‘crew’.
- March 2023
At the Young Women’s Empowerment Forum, Karina, the youngest female partner in a prestigious law firm, is poised to impart her wisdom to the hordes of Gen Z women who regard her as a role model in a male-dominated industry. Unexpectedly, Karina is thrust into a Zoom breakout room with Sara, her former intern, whose experiences throw into question Karina’s #girlboss sloganeering… #WomenSupportingWomen maps the vast expanse of greys behind the glib hashtag of solidarity, and unpacks the performances expected of women as leaders in the workplace — and as victims in the courtroom. The play also explores the incongruities of virtual identities in our post-pandemic world, where we are forced to project our public selves while in our most private spaces.
- March 2023
A and B have been close friends, for a while. A is sharp, witty and unafraid to be vulnerable; especially when they drink too much. B is more traditional, straight, and is quick to tell A when the point of 'too much' has been reached. They bounce off each other and push each other; neither are afraid of an argument. However, when military intervention in another country provokes them to severe disagreement, the closeness of their friendship is brought into question. B has a new girlfriend, A disapproves. B suggests A gets help for what might be a drinking problem. The volume is dialed up when a protest forms against the military intervention and A and B come to a head. Neither will back down, and both are at a tipping point, will either of them step in?
- March 2023
- February 2023
Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python and you have The 39 Steps, a fast-paced whodunit for anyone who loves comedy! In The 39 Steps, a man with a boring life meets a woman with a thick accent who says she’s a spy. When he takes her home, she is murdered. Soon, a mysterious organisation called “The 39 Steps” is hot on the man’s trail in a nationwide manhunt that climaxes in a death-defying finale! A riotous blend of virtuoso performances and wildly inventive stagecraft, the play is also packed with over 150 characters (played by a cast of four), an onstage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers, and some good old-fashioned romance!
- February 2023
Thirty-five years ago, all the fish disappeared. No one knows where. No one knows how. No one knows why.
In a hearing committee on Capitol Hill, three Senators are still searching for answers.
- February 2023
On midsummer's eve, 1889, in the count's kitchen, Miss Julie asks her valet to dance.
"He's trembling, the big strong boy... with arms like that..."
Miss Julie introduces two characters who are at war with themselves and their positions in life.
Julie, whose strange behaviour makes her the subject of gossip, has just left her fiance. She is unable to face her family and ill at ease with members of her own class.
Jean is an ambitious valet. Loosely affianced to Christine, a servant, he is drawn to Julie although he knows that she brings risks.
Helen Cooper's version of Strindberg's absurdist and confrontational play is coming to Pembroke New Cellars Week 3 Lent Term.
- November 2022
- November 2022
Jude can’t pray. In fact, every time she tries to pray, she blacks-out and wakes up masturbating. But when her mother falls ill, everything gets slightly less funny, no less absurd and a lot more complicated. Combining punk theatricality with dry humour and a deeply human focus, I Can’t Pray is a unique and exciting piece of new writing by Laurie Ward. Previous praise for Laurie’s writing include: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟‘incredibly emotive’ - Three Weeks / 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 ‘genuine originality…daring’ - Varsity.
Free glass of wine included in the ticket price
