Posh

Synopsis

In an oak-panelled room in Oxford, ten young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine. But this isn’t the last huzzah: they’re planning a takeover. Welcome to the Riot Club.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 16 April 2010

Scabrously funny, disgustingly smug, and deeply disturbing, Laura Wade’s brilliant new play Posh shows a group of public school rich boys behaving badly in an Oxfordshire private dining club and lamenting their loss of a country they think they both own and created.

Clearly based on the Bullingdon at Oxford University (of which David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson were prominent members), the play’s Riot Club is also a metaphor in the class divide, and represents a streak of political brutality in the Conservative Party that for the moment lies dormant as candidate “Dave” develops his compassionate image.

It’s hugely ironic that one of Cameron’s “big ideas” is for a citizens’ army recruited to repair a damaged society, presumably the one duffed up by his chums in the Bullingdon. The most ferocious member of Wade’s Riot Club is Leo Bill’s ratty and vengeful Alistair Ryle who...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

David Baxter - 22 May 2010:

Given that Cameron, Osborne and indeed Clegg have joined Boris in positions of power, this either proves Laura Wade's flaky, paranoid conspiracy theory or that Posh had absolutely no effect on the electorate - probably the latter judging by the demographic of the audience. Students of all classes and sexes have always spent their university years getting wasted; then they grow up under the pressure of loans, mortgages, jobs and families. For all its faults as a basic premise, Posh is well constructed, brilliantly performed and frequently very funny. However, it should not be taken seriously by anyone other than deluded class warriors like Ed Balls or Michael Coveney - even Michael Billington saw through it. Perhaps we can now look forward to a Royal Court season on the hypocritical venality and corruption of the Blair government or the bullying incompetence of Brown . . . or perhaps not....

Read more and add your own review

Related Whatsonstage.com Articles

Posh prances to West End for the summer? 1st Night Photos: Posh David Cameron Double Take Review Round-up: Were Critics Outclassed at Posh? Cast: Royal Court Gets Posh, Hi-De-Hi! on Tour More»