21:30, Tue 15th – Sat 19th November 2011 at Pembroke New Cellars
Michaelmas Week 6

You've Burnt The Parsnips is an original 45 minute one-act comedy, telling the story of an ill-fated dinner party.

Susan, a positively obnoxious snob, is fretting over the last-minute preparations for the dinner party she is holding for her brother’s twenty-fifth birthday. While she panics and perfects every minute detail, all her husband, Simon, does is dance along to his only remaining record, after the mysterious disappearance of his collection. Simon - a long-suffering and downtrodden man - yearns to escape his marriage but is too weak to oppose his tyrannical wife.

As the guests arrive, the underlying tensions surface all too easily: Susan’s bitter competition with her “common” sister, Brenda; a not-so-subtle affair between Susan and Brenda’s husband; and Susan’s overbearing mollycoddling of her wimp of a younger brother.

Served with a generous helping of snide gibes and a hearty dollop of awkwardness thanks to an unworn Christmas present and a total disregard for the Estonian champagne industry, "Parsnips" follows every member of the family reaching breaking point and setting out to exact revenge in increasingly inventive ways.

Will the evening’s events finally set Simon free?