The Pembroke Players, resident theatre society of its namesake college, turns 70 next year, having been founded by some enterprising undergraduates in Michaelmas 1955. Its output, though perhaps modest for Cambridge theatre at large, has been prolific for a collegiate organisation. In celebration of this upcoming milestone, let’s look back through the records at the decades of history – full of interesting stories and big names – that the society has seen.

One of the original members confirmed via email the story passed down by the anonymous editors of the Players’ wikipedia page. Rather than lofty ambitions of theatrical and comedic greatness, he wrote that “sex was the motivation behind its formation”. Plays with mixed gender casts were used as a way for undergraduates of the all-male Pembroke college to meet women from Newnham and Girton, then vastly outnumbered. This approach was evidently successful as all three founding members met their wives co-starring in society shows. Their first production was Ring Round the Moon in a local church hall during December 1955.

“Sex was the motivation behind its formation”

Another oft-told story from Pembroke Players’ early history is the circumstance surrounding their inaugural German tour. An invitation sent to the now long extinct ‘Cambridge Mummers’ inadvertently ended up in the hands of one of the Players, who accepted it on behalf of his society. In the summer of 1957 a cast of adventurous Cantabs headed off to West Germany to perform Hamlet. A show by the totally wrong Cambridge society must have satisfied local audiences, as they were invited back the following year, beginning an annual tradition of tours to the area. Notable for the second tour, a production of The Merchant of Venice in 1958, was the presence of Peter Cook in the cast, the first of many big names to come through the society.

By the early/mid-1960s the society had settled into a rhythm of regular play-reading sessions, a termly production, and the German tour in the summer. They were also hosting ‘smoking concerts’, in which student comics could test out new material. Through these events, the Pembroke Players participated in what is surely the golden age of Cambridge comedy, most famous for the meeting of the Pythons. Eric Idle went to Pembroke and got his start with the group, appearing in a Players production of Strindberg’s The Father, before being cast in the Footlights. Clive James was running the society’s comedy events at the time, and other big names like Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor made their appearances at the college.

“The Pembroke Players participated in what is surely the golden age of Cambridge comedy”

After this, though, the archival trail goes cold for quite some time. The German tour continued for a while but stopped at some point. The University Library archive has programmes for two 1970 productions ‘presented by the Pembroke Players’: Entertaining Mr Sloane at the ADC in January, and The Comedy of Errors in November, venue unspecified. Alumni have mentioned the Players sending shows to Edinburgh Fringe in the 1970s, but with less big names for older members to reminisce about and no online record-keeping, piecing together a picture of the society and its activities in these decades is difficult.

Modern records on Camdram begin at the turn of the millennium. Around this time two actors in The Inbetweeners came through Pembroke – Alex McQueen (Neil’s dad) graduated in 1997, and Joe Thomas (Simon) in 2005. Tom Hiddleston was also at the college in the early 00s and likely had some involvement in the society, or so Wikipedia’s notable alumni list claims, but sadly evidence of this is lacking. New Cellars, Pembroke’s new ‘studio theatre’ (to put it kindly), became the society’s home in 1997, though Camdram documents the society funding shows across the university right up until the pandemic.

“The society’s renewal in the last two academic years has been focused on re-establishing lost institutional knowledge and building a name for the Players”

The modern era of the society seems to properly begin with the particularly enthusiastic 2004/5 committee (still friends to this day). They organised a revival of the German tour with a production of The Importance of Being Earnest in the summer of 2005, and hosted the first ‘black tie smoker’ in 2004, an annual comedy event recalling the smoking concerts of the 60s. The Camdram for the 2009 iteration details a rather analogue method for audiences to reserve a seat: leaving a check for £10 in the organiser’s pidge. From this point the society’s activity resembles the Cambridge theatre scene today: Fringe shows, May Week events, smokers, freshers’ productions, and new writing competitions.

A Facebook post advertising four productions in one week during Lent 2016 records the society at its peak activity: a Mainshow production of Great Expectations, two late shows (including the intriguingly titled Quinoa 2: No Pain No Grain, the poster for which lives on in the New Cellars tech cupboard), and a Corpus Playroom Lateshow they funded. Simultaneously, the revived tour became an annual trip to Japan, running between 2007 and 2017. The wiki editors left us an account from the 2011 tour, when ‘Typhoon Roke caused problems for the group with two actors trapped on a bullet train for 11 hours near Nagoya’.

With ill-fated timing, the society hosted a specially ‘1920s speakeasy’ themed black tie Smoker, featuring returning alumni Bill Oddie and Alex McQueen, in March 2020. The pandemic period saw a smattering of online events and productions, but with New Cellars shut down and being used for storage, not much could be done. The society’s renewal in the last two academic years has been focused on re-establishing lost institutional knowledge and building a name for the Players. Two black tie smokers have been held, alongside freshers’ pantomimes (though not back in the hall quite yet) and termcards for regular smokers and productions in New Cellars. And thus we come to the present, as a new committee begins their tenure at the helm of the society and a new cohort of freshers are soon to join. Who knows, maybe they’ll even meet their future life partners in the recesses of New Cellars, in the spirit of our founding fathers.