Posh (Oberon Modern Plays)

Product Information

Posh’ is a sharp, witty and frighteningly insightful look into young, upper class scholars who thrive in their descent into debauchery. Nobody of our generation has taught me more about combining formal control with spirited innovation. But, on a second viewing, it becomes clear that Wade's chief target is not just privileged toffs but the cosy network that really runs Britain.

Posh - Laura Wade - Google Books

Every day we make progress with the vaccine rollout and we can start to look forward to the full reopening at step four [ of the roadmap]”. It’s based loosely on the Bullingdon Club at Oxford, whose former members include the current Mayor of London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister. If we didn’t think the behaviour was foul throughout and noticed the links between the Bullingdon Club and the Tory Party’s commanding heights, I’m not sure the ending was going to help.By the end, Wade said she felt her background might actually have been an advantage: "It was freeing because it meant I had room to make stuff up and imagine my way behind that closed door, and try to take the audience with me," she said. The memory of luxuriant locks, the sheen of well-bred youth who might have looked more at home at Oxbridge, later inspired a joke in Posh, the play that made Wade famous in 2010. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine.

Posh (play) - Wikipedia

But her argument would be even stronger if it admitted that, even within the ranks of the bluebloods, there were occasional spasms of doubt and decency. Laura Wade's new play is highly topical: it is about the sense of entitlement to power of a privileged, wealthy, public school and Oxbridge elite. They put on their bespoke tails and hold their termly dinner at a country pub with the express intent of trashing the room by the end of the evening and paying for the damage with a large wad of cash on the way out.The cast comprises ten (male) members of the club; the owner of the hotel and his daughter; a (female) escort; and an older Tory grandee, only seen in the prologue and epilogue.

Lack of support for theatre is to discourage dissent, says

The play was born what feels like a long time ago now, in 2007, at the Royal Court Theatre; it started as a broader project investigating young people and privilege. With its dark academia vibes, this play delves into conversation about class difference, financial troubles and how the strong prey on the weak and less fortunate. Her first play for the Royal Court, Breathing Corpses played in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in 2005 and won her the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright, the Pearson Playwrights Best Play Award, the George Devine Award and an Olivier Award Nomination for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre.

Directed by Dane Lone Scherfig, who made the equally English film An Education in 2009, Wade's story still centres on a group of overprivileged undergraduates who set about getting "chateaued" at a "trashable" dining club venue one night.