Review: 'Posh'

by Alex Boyall, 

Before reading our review catch our preview of the production on the ((URY PLAYER)) here!

The satirically up-to-date Posh, written by Sheffield playwright Laura Wade, is a dramatisation of the antics of the infamous Bullingdon Club members (renamed the Riot Club here) - a socially exclusive student dining club at Oxford University, notorious for its members' wealth and destructive binges.

As we enter the barn, we are presented with two armchairs facing us, one occupied by the ex-Riot Club member, now Tory MP Jeremy (Mungo Tatton-Brown). As the play starts the other is taken by his godson Guy Bellingfield (Louis Lunts), and they immediately set the tone for the rest of the play, mocking comprehensive schools, foreigners, and the lower classes; whilst Jeremy reminiscies and joking about how much more reckless and enterprising the Riot Club was when Jeremy was a member. Though a comparatively small role, Tatton-Brown plays his age and character well, providing a strong springboard for the rest of the production.

A simple transition to the main tableaux - a function room at the Bull's Head pub - then occurs. We are introduced slightly shakily to each Riot Club member one by one, nevertheless once all 10 are seated the dynamic changes and each actor relaxes into their respective characters. We soon realise that these boys born into privilege believe that they are far superior to everyone else and consequentially treat them like dirt.

Chris (John Askew), who does well in the role of the contrastingly common landlord of the pub, manages to unintentionally incur the wrath of several members of the club through a series of errors, putting him, along with his daughter Rachel (Anna Thirkettle), on an irreversible path to the climactic final scene.

The internal politics of the group are clear to see throughout the show - three younger members - Lunts, along with Alistair Ryle (Nick Armfield), and Dimitri Mitropoulos (Connor Abbott) - are scrapping for dominance and the vote of the other members to take over the position of the ailing and indecisive president of the club, James Leighton-Masters (Fergus Nolan). A spirited mid-show appearance by Charlie the call girl (Maria Terry), hired by Harry Villiers (Lewis Chandler) to pleasure his fellow members under the table as they ate, gave us a welcome respite, lifted the time spent solely concentrated on the 10 Riot Club members, and gave us a taste of the darker material yet to come in the play.

The two freeze-frames at the end of the first act and beginning of the second were well constructed, and left the actors in positions reminiscent of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the central revolutionary Armfield positioned dead-centre, the Christ-like saviour to the club’s other members.

Despite several vivid performances from the cast including Abbott, and Ryan Hall as Hugo Fraser-Tyrwhitt - who delivered a well-timed, comically altered poetic opening to Shakespeare's King Henry V - a few stepped on and forgotten lines during the long dining scenes meant that some of the forward momentum was lost. However, I think that was more down to first-night nerves than any real failure on the part of the actors.

Whilst not wishing to reveal the ending of the play, the powerful and tense final scene was well crafted by the directors, with the emotion of the moment showing well in all the actors present, especially the impassioned pleas for mercy from Armfield.

Hear the full audio review on YorWorld on the ((URY PLAYER)) here!