With past members of the Bullingdon Club such as Boris Johnson currently in the public eye, there is no better time to revive Laura Wade’s politically appropriate play.
Posh is a comedy drama about the life of the members of ‘The Riot Club’ which has many remarkable similarities to the infamous Bullingdon Club. It follows an evening of drinking, dining and attempted debauchery as the club reunites after being split due to a previous evening that got out of hand.
Tyger Drew-Honey, known for his roles in Outnumbered and Cuckoo, plays the self-righteous Alistair Ryle but despite being the big name in the programme is outshone by Adam Mirsky who plays the eager to please Guy Bellingfield. Overall the cast is young and relatively new to the stage but their inexperience doesn’t hinder them and they are all brilliantly fresh and witty as the mischievous undergraduates.
The story tells a blunt message with not a lot of space for interpretation. The play is written with the aim to make you find the 10 rich, spoilt and stuck up boys so unbearable, and with a lot of crude humour and distasteful jokes it doesn’t take you long to manage this.
I do feel the play could have been shorter without losing it’s impact. The content is entertaining but I feel the plot lacks drive, direction and pace until late in the second act. Even then I am unsure about an odd section involving a ghost which seems out of place in the plot.
Overall, Posh is a brilliant insight into a room that not many made it into. What the Bullingdon boys got up to is hilarious, extreme and quite frankly unbelievable and this depiction is very entertaining.