The year is some point in the future. The temperature is not relevant. The students are probably students like you. But, the university is now introducing something big. It’s bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. It’s so freaking BIG. It’s Organised Fun.*

*only for an hour. It’s not that big.

The premise behind Laugh, Why Don’t You? is simple. The University decides to introduce an hour of mandatory fun a week to boost overall productivity rates before allowing us to toddle back to the library with fun bars full and bladder bars low (I always need to pee after a show). As soon as the house lights go down and the stage lights at Pembroke New Cellars go up, a whirlwind of energy and hilarity will hop onto the stage and be your most attentive hosts for the evening.

The purpose of this sketch show is not to have a gimmick or to shoehorn a framing device between sketches. It simply is designed to be an hour of good old-fashioned, laugh-out-loud, rub-your-belly comedy. Characters are created to be extravagant and larger than life, emerging from sketches that focus on witty lines, physicality and a range of accents outside the realm of the M25. Cambridge comedy can sometimes get very dark and political, so to see a show that is spreading its wings as a light-hearted and very silly butterfly is not only an unnecessarily extended metaphor, but also extremely refreshing. 

“Laugh, Why Don't You? has not one, but two token male performers (don’t worry, ladies, I hear that sometimes white men can indeed be funny)”

The team behind this are no rookies to the high-profile game of silly and fun – and certainly not when it comes to entertaining each other. Every show has its birth, and they nod towards their month long run of Five Go Off On One! at the Edinburgh Fringe in a flat with no wifi as the moment of conception. Over evenings of card games and alcohol, a new challenge of “out-funny-ing” each other was formed.

And it is this that has found its way into a script and onto a stage to be in front or a more (or less) willing audience. With not one, but two token male performers (don’t worry, ladies, I hear that sometimes white men can indeed be funny), this team is ready to take on the world of comedy, or at least the Pembroke stage. 

Review: Improv Actually

We won’t know until after the hour is up if all the laughter was as promised, but having spoken to the cast and seeing the energy and talent behind each sketch, I would be very surprised if your quota for fun was not filled just in time to bang out that essay. This flurry of fun has arrived just in time for Week Five blues, so if you’re free – or even if you’re not – get yourselves down to Pembroke next week and laugh, why don’t you?

Laugh, Why Don't You? runs from Tues 21st - Weds 22nd February at Pembroke New Cellars, 9:30pm