Pompeii is, essentially, the story of five people realising that they don't like each other very much. If the world was ending in an hour's time, what would you do? The answer, according to this new play by Eli Keren, is 'argue'. 

And the arguments are very realistic. Characters repeat themselves endlessly, contradict themselves frequently and ... um ... lose the thread of the conversation. That said, the cast does a good job of holding things together, particularly Ben Spiro as James, who seems to inhabit his part effortlessly. All five actors operate seamlessly as a unit, managing to establish relationships and hierarchies for the audience from the opening lines of the play. It's excellent to see such nuanced presentations of the different personalities on stage, and Keren uses their particular voices to demonstrate his skill as a writer. When endearingly fragile Oli (played by Alex Thompson) reads out a poem which he's written for the occasion, it just manages to walk the line between continuing to engage the audience whilst still being convincingly terrible. 

Pompeii is sadly beset by the same problems as every other Pembroke production this term: the use of space is clumsy, and the sound is terrible. Setting a play in such a bare space can be thrilling, but it can also very easily feel cheap. As the characters give in to their emotions over the course of the play, their shouts and cries echo around the cellars, getting louder and more frenetic – until suddenly the furniture is being rearranged every thirty seconds, and the audience is getting a headache. At times even the actors seem confused about who is meant to be speaking the loudest. So much for a realistic script; nobody flings armchairs around with such weightless abandon in real life.

'Real life' is what Pompeii comes down to in the end. The play stands or falls on whether you buy into Keren's vision of the apocalypse: would there really be dull games of Truth or Dare? Would you really be worried about what future archaeologists would think of the interior design? (A warning for Arch and Anth students: this play could make you very neurotic about how much past societies are messing with you.) If you agree with such a bitter, mundane death, then you might find that Pompeii exposes some great truths. If you hope for more from humanity, it might get you down. Even the occasional flashes of insight or tenderness from the characters are cut off short, or mocked by the others.

Go and see Pompeii for the acting. But if all you're after is an hour of weak jokes and cynical twenty-something philosophising, a drink at the college bar is probably cheaper.