- October 2010
At the dawn of human civilisation, only the big, muscular men and women able to defend their families and tribes survived. As these groups grew in number, and the tall, strong farmers could provide food surpluses, an evolutionary niche was filled by the 'comedy writer'. This weak-willed yet mindful fool used wit to disarm opponents, self deprecation to lull them into a false sense of security, and then, finally, irony to deliver the fatal blow. Laughter evolved as a defense mechanism, and is as popular today as ever. This sketch show is its next test.
- September 2010
Pembroke Players' JAPAN TOUR 2010
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING William Shakespeare
'I do suffer love indeed, for I do love thee against my will.'
Want to spend three weeks in Japan this summer, travelling twelve thousand miles and performing Shakespeare to four thousand students?
For the past three years Pembroke Players have been running an annual Japan Tour which is now, along with CAST and ETG, the most prestigious and successful international student theatre tour in Cambridge.
The 2010 Tour will perform Much Ado About Nothing in seven or eight universities around Japan, in venues of up to 2,000 seats each, over a period of three weeks in September 2010. Between performances we hold workshops on acting and directing for Japanese students.
On return to the UK, the Tour completes a home run in Cambridge. Two years ago we performed in the incredible atmosphere of King's College Chapel, and also in the Japanese Embassy in London. This year we're looking to do the same, and also call in on a central London theatre.
The personal cost to you would be no more than £300, probably less.
Those travelling to Japan will need to be able to commit to be free from early August to the start of October next year.
There will be 6 male and 4 female roles. Those with SINGING, DANCE and other MUSICAL skills are particularly welcome.
Much Ado About Nothing is Shakespeare's biting comedy about the sharpest-witted hero and heroine in history. This bitter-sweet play will be set in Edwardian England – a world of pantaloons, bicycles, croquet and Votes for Women. In this war of the sexes, who will come out the victor?
- June 2010
Broadcasting to the world that you're impotent might not seem the most appropriate way to get the opposite sex into bed but in Wycherley's play 'The Country wife' appropriate is a dirty word. Welcome to the world of excess, scandal and intrigue. A world where virtue is a thin veneer and one man sets out on a mission to bed all the willing wives of London. This production of the Country Wife is set in Edwardian England. In a society where men can have as many mistresses as they can afford Pinchwife, tired of being jilted by prostitutes, marries Margery - a young 'innocent' girl from the country - in the hope that she, unlike the London women, will remain faithful to him. Despite his efforts to keep her away from his lascivious friends when Horner sets eyes on the country beauty his mind is made up. He determines to have Margery just as firmly as Pinchwife determines he will not. The stage is set. It will be quite the performance.
- May 2010
Entertaining Mr. Sloane, arguably Joe Orton’s funniest play, depicts what happens when Sloane, an amoral, manipulative, young man with no qualms about surrendering his body, goes to live with Kath as a lodger. Kath, a sexually repressed middle-aged frump, can hardly contain her desire to bed Sloane, however, complications arise when it becomes clear that neither can her closet-homosexual brother, Ed. The situation becomes yet further complicated when Kath and Ed’s father, Kemp, recognises Sloane as the ruthless murderer of his former boss. Written and set in the 1960s, Sloane follows the actions of those who we assume would know better; their rapacious needs, their ignorance, and their unwitting violence. It promises to be both an unsettling and wickedly amusing distraction from the stale boredom of Week 3 revision.
- March 2010
‘Quality Street’: the glittering Restoration-revival comedy that inspired a family favourite box of chocolates. Phoebe Throssel and Valentine Brown are the lovers parted by war in Napoleon’s Europe; when Brown returns home, it seems old passions have been laid to rest. But with the aid of her stalwart sister, Phoebe sets out to captivate Brown once again in the guise of her own coquettish ‘niece’. The light-hearted deception mounts to a crisis, with hilarious complications, and a heart-warming conclusion. Auditions: Sunday 24th January, Pembroke College, N7, 14:00-18:00 Contact: Alexander Whiscombe aw413 with any questions.
- February 2010
‘Loving Leticia’ is a lighthearted, newly-written melodrama, which is full of fun, comedy and laughter. Leticia is in love with Augustus, but her mother is desperately trying to marry her off to Lord Leighton who is certainly not all he seems... Is poor Leticia doomed or will love conquer all?
- February 2010
Once again it is time for the Pembroke Players Black Tie Smoker, the classiest comedy event on the Cambridge calendar!
A splendid evening of champagne, canapes and cackling with Cambridge's finest student comedians, plus, this year, a special headline act from the London circuit.
Dress code is black tie. Hence the name, you know.
- February 2010
‘Funny bloke, Charles. He’s a lovely man. One of the best. But you know the only trouble is he’s a nutter.’
Charles runs a bar in South London. He’s a man’s man, handsome, charismatic. But something’s not right: his wife is dead, grief isn’t easy and there’s a lot of rum that needs drinking. Science can’t help him. Religion can’t help him. Can Lucy, his new barmaid? Perhaps. But should he really be teaching a livewire like her to defend herself with a baseball bat? It can only be a matter of time before something, or someone, gets broken. Join these two hotheads on their erratic course through a loveless London full of shadowy characters and dodgy secrets, soaked in booze, violence and each other.
- January 2010
The year is 1964. Mary is nineteen and in love with her Dansette record player. And her boyfriend. She lives in a nice house with nice parents and has a nice job in a bank. Life is perfect.
Until Mary discovers she is pregnant.
Things like that don’t happen to nice girls. Society hides its bad girls away.
Mary, hidden away in a mother and baby home, fights to keep her baby against the wishes of everybody who knows her. Will she succeed in her dream?
Set to the irresistible music of the early 60s, Be My Baby is guaranteed to make you laugh and cry.
- November 2009
1980s London. Four friends share a flat in Earl’s Court. The prospect of the property boom, however, brings the threat of separation, renovation and re-evaluation. While their landlord’s offer to buy out his tenants leaves Sherry giddy with excitement, Marion consults her biological clock, Paul becomes a DIY demon and Howard wishes everyone would just shut the hell up! Communal domestic ‘bliss’ is stretched to breaking point in a world where real estate affects individuals and property values are placed on friendship. Property isn’t the only thing at stake.
- November 2009
The play follows the philosophical, meandering and often comical conversations of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two incidental characters from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet', as they wait for something to happen to them. Whenever something does, it is in the form of encounters with other characters from 'Hamlet', which just serve to make the title duo question the bizarre nature of their lives further. Slowly they realise, that rather than being leads in their own story, they might just be disposable roles in someone else's.
- November 2009
When a deranged boy, Alan Strang, blinds six horses with a metal spike, he is sentenced to psychiatric treatment. Dr Dysart is the man given the task of uncovering what happened the night Strang committed his crime, but in doing so he will open up his own wounds. While Dysart struggles to define sanity, and justify his marriage, his career, and his life of normality; ultimately he must ask himself: is it the patient or psychiatrist whose life is being laid bare?
- November 2009
Scott McPherson’s dark and mordantly funny comedy is about one woman’s commitment to caring for her family first, even in the face of personal tragedy. Nominated in 1992 for the Drama Desk Awards Outstanding New Play, the title character, who is never seen onstage, has been dying for 20 years. Bessie, Marvin’s daughter, has been taking care of Marvin and her aunt all her adult life, and she will continue to do so until they drop or she does.
Her relationship with her sister is a different story...Estranged since their father's first stroke some 17 years earlier, Lee and Bessie lead separate lives in separate states. Lee has two sons, neither of whom are particularly normal: Charlie always has his nose in a book, and (in a more extreme example of abnormality) Hank was committed to a psychiatric hospital after setting fire to the house. Early in the play we discover Bessie has leukaemia and is in need of a bone marrow transplant. This necessitates a call to her sister...The impact that Bessie has on Lee and her sons, particularly Hank, is the underlying story of Marvin’s Room.
- November 2009
“A great while ago the world begun with hey, ho, the wind and the rain ...”
When twins Viola and Sebastian are shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria, each of them believes that the other is dead. In order to survive alone in this masculine world, Viola disguises herself as a boy with some surprising consequences!
Come and audition for the chance to take part in Shakespeare’s darkly comic tale of love, deception and cross-dressing...
- October 2009
This will be the amateur premiere of Stenham's electrifying first play, written when she was just 19.
Mia is about to be kicked out of boarding school for sticking mummy's Valium down a younger girl's throat. Henry has dropped out of school in a desperate attempt to hold his screwed up family together. Martha will control and ruin both of their lives. Martha is addicted to prescription medication. Martha is their mother.
In his review in The Telegraph, Charles Spencer called THAT FACE "one of the most astonishing debuts I have seen in more than 30 years of theatre reviewing." This production, the first in the U.K. since its premiere at the Royal Court in 2007, will take place in an explosive world of fluorescent light, using the intimate confines of the Playroom to create the claustrophobic environment of Martha's squalid bedroom.
- August–October 2009
PPJT is a touring theatre society based at Pembroke College, which takes Shakespeare around Japanese schools and universities in September, before returning to Cambridge for a home run at the beginning of the Michaelmas term.
This year sees 'The Tempest' go east, having previously sold out at the ADC, receiving 4* reviews in Varsity and TCS, and wowing audiences with its bold staging, innovative design, and spectacular theatrical tricks.
- June 2009
Set in an eighteenth century chateau, Duchess of Vaubricourt and other victims of Don Juan's charms gather to get vengeance on him and put him on Trial. His sentence? To marry his latest conquest, the young Angelique, the Duchess' niece. Old bitterness, jealousy and desire rise again, just to leave us to wonder whether the terrible seducer was really so heartless after all...
- May 2009
- March 2009
In the history of great men, where do the mediocre fit in?
Professor Thomson is, in her own words, “feckless and posh, but really rather clever.” However, despite her boundless self-confidence the invention of a time machine in her lab does come as something of a surprise. Her delicate equilibrium is further disrupted by the arrival of some angry historians closely followed by the political establishment. Fortunately two ambitious young journalists are at hand to make sure the fiasco is recorded for posterity.
Will the history of humanity be irrevocably altered? Will the space-time continuum be destroyed? But most importantly will Professor Thomson’s vintage wine smuggling project prove profitable?
- March 2009
In the history of great men, where do the mediocre fit in?
Professor Thomson is, in her own words, “feckless and posh, but really rather clever.” However, despite her boundless self-confidence the invention of a time machine in her lab does come as something of a surprise. Her delicate equilibrium is further disrupted by the arrival of some angry historians closely followed by the political establishment. Fortunately two ambitious young journalists are at hand to make sure the fiasco is recorded for posterity.
Will the history of humanity be irrevocably altered? Will the space-time continuum be destroyed? But most importantly will Professor Thomson’s vintage wine smuggling project prove profitable?
"Historical Fiction" is the runner-up in the Pembroke Players New Writing Competition.
- February 2009
Martin Cranmer, self-made entrepreneur and overbearing patriarch, is dead. The family he left behind gather on the eve of his funeral. His widow Judith faces a clouded and uncertain future, his brother John must confront his true feelings for her, his three sons must find a new place within the family, and his two uncommunicative, very different daughters must face the true pain of the past they long to escape. As night stretches into morning, each one’s relationships with everyone else is questioned, and the effect the authoritarian, uncompromising father had on each of them is brutally realised. In an ambitious, intensely powerful piece of new writing, Adam Hollingworth exposes the weak foundations of supposedly unconditionally loving bonds, the damaging and reverberating effect of abuse, and the struggles which lie at the heart of family loyalty and personal liberation.
- February 2009
A sparkly evening of entertainment.
With audience and performers in black tie, admission price includes cava and canapes. Tickets by reservation only: to secure your place, put a cheque for £10 (payable to "The Pembroke Players") in Will McAdam's pigeon hole in Pembroke by 6pm on Wednesday 4th February. This event always sells out, so do it now avoid disappointment!
- November 2008
- November 2008
A quiet family gathering. A harrowing revelation. A deep, dark, challenging piece of contemporary theatre.
Helge is sixty. It is a time of celebration. A time for the family to gather and smooth over the cracks left by the suicide of Linda, twin sister to Christian. As Helge's eldest son, Christian will raise the first toast.
Confined within the family house, the guests are rocked by the revelations that pierce and destroy the veneer of middle-class respectability.
- November 2008
Constantius, the ageing king of Britain, decides to entrust half of his realm to Vortigern. He accepts, but soon falls prey to his ambition, orchestrating the murder of Constantius and seizing the crown. When Vortigern is forced to London to take his last stand, the fate of Dark Age Britain is sealed.
Battles, discarded wives, dastardly murder, scheming warlords and sultry seduction abound in this “lost work” of the Bard, written fraudulently by William Henry Ireland in 1796. The play was inspired by the eighteenth century obsession with Shakespeare, but both play and author have lain in relative obscurity ever since.
Join the Pembroke Players for a one-night stand in the New Cellars on November the 19th, possibly this play’s first performance for over two hundred years, and enjoy an evening of treachery and greed in Mediaeval Britain.
- November 2008
To welcome you back to another year, Pembroke Players invite you to join them at the Sticky Floor Smoker. The reasons for its name may be lost in the mists of time, but it promises drinks, laughs and a good time all round.
- November 2008
- November 2008
"I want you to listen. Because I am trying to unlace all of my life."
Five stars in Varsity. "I really can’t think of a better new play I’ve seen at Cambridge...To say more would be to dissect too far. This play and production truly deserve to be seen." *****
An actress and a journalist. A brother and sister. Set in the hours before dawn and death.
By Freddy Syborn, joint winner of the Other Prize 2008, and writer of Flesh-Eating Jacobean Zombies, Indivisible and Now the late last winter.
- October 2008
The most exotic theatrical tour run by any British university is now in its second year, and is bringing a highly-polished production of A Midsummer Night's Dream back to Cambridge. Begun with a rehearsal period in Cambridge and London performances in late August, the tour moved across to Japan for most of September, and has now returned for a home run in Cambridge's most noted building, King's College Chapel, at the start of the Michaelmas term. The tour visited ten venues in Japan, from 100-seater warehouses to 2000-seater professional theatres (not to mention the temple featured in The Last Samurai). Critical response has been exceptionally positive: come and see for yourself!
- June 2008
"I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life - that life that must go on, come what may. I want everything of life, I do, and I want it now! I want it total, complete; otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate."
It's May Week, garden parties abound: come to one with a dark twist in the Pembroke Gardens. As the cast sip champagne and eat strawberries, a tragic tale is unfolding on a golden summer afternoon. A heroine desperate to die for what she believes in confronts a monarch who has no time for tragic destiny. Politics struggle with principle and ideas of happiness conflict in a dramatic encounter on the library lawn. Meanwhile a doomed love story plays out the irrationality of youth and the compromises of age. Jean Anouilh's Antigone explores the nature of tragedy and catharsis, bringing it out of Ancient Greece and into our daily lives.
- June 2008
Possibly the most fabulous, definitely the most frivolous garden party of the season, with a sparkling comedy line-up:
ALCOCK IMPROV, ALICE FRASER, CATHY BUEKER, DAVID ISAACS, GILES REGER, HARRY WINSTANLEY, JAZZ JAGGER, JULIET SHARDLOW, KATY BULMER, LAURIE COLDWELL, WILL HENSHER, WILL McADAM
... and TOM OVENS' last Cambridge appearance before he leaves for Germany.
£4 a ticket, pay on the door. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=22953790099
- May 2008
Cambridge's finest comedians in all their shiny glory.
FEATURING: Tom Ovens, Nate Dern, Will Hensher, James Moran, Lucien Young to name a few...
Compered by the dazzling Will McAdam, this will be quite the night.
Please email wpm22 for more information.
- March 2008
An unnamed man - apparently a war criminal -is being interviewed by a woman possessed by an absolute conviction in her nation's ability to kill history, and her assistant, who tells bad jokes. They discuss Viennese coffee, quantum physics and the multi-world theory, art, advertising, Shakespeare as an infinitely-typing monkey and how best to kill a man with a set of dentures. They also discuss the extermination of a race.
Partially based upon Hannah Arendt's account of Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, Indivisible is the latest play from the writer/director Freddy Syborn who was responsible for last term's Flesh-Eating Jacobean Zombies, and who is currently co-writing a new sketch show for Tiger Aspect, a comedy and drama production company.
- March 2008
On a Saturday evening in July, Sarah, arrives with her husband Reg, to his mother's home to give Reg's sister, Annie, a weekend off from caring for their cantankerous invalid mother. Norman, Annie's brother-in-law, a scruffy assistant librarian, who dreams of sexual conquests, also arrives. An exploration of deceit, sex and control soon follow with Sarah learning that Norman, having had sex with Annie the previous Christmas, now intends to take her away for a dirty weekend to East Grinstead. That evening, a hilarious scene of false manners ensues. Etiquette and absurdity dominate this brilliant "comic masterpiece".
- February 2008
This powerful thriller sees two Oxbridge students, Brandon and Granillo, first deciding to murder a fellow student, and then to hide him in a chest in their flat, justifying their actions as "intellectual pursuit". Before disposing of the body, however, they decide that inviting the boy's father and aunt around for a party would provide their actions with a fitting denouement. Cue suspicions and sexual tensions in this dark, but striking 1920s drama.
- November 2007
Four young men embark on a three-year course of study with the noblest of intentions. In fact, they are so well meaning that they swear never to see a woman until their studies are over with.
And that's all fine until the Princess of France arrives…
Love, banter, Spanish princes, this hilarious but rarely seen comedy is not to be missed. ESPECIALLY because it's set in the 80s.
Book online to avoid disappointment at www.pembrokeplayers.org or get your tickets at the door.
