Port Out, Starboard Home. While there may be little thought or knowledge about the word’s maritime beginnings, “posh” remains deeply rooted in British vernacular – usually used pejoratively. Posh people – the upper class, toffs, Hooray-Henries or whatever you will – are one of the few phyla left in modern Britain that it is acceptable to openly and publicly hate. They are the scapegoats onto which modern Britons can project the huge weight of their uglier thoughts and emotions necessarily suppressed by political correctness – the intolerance of intolerance. But this is starting to sound very much like a conversation about politics….
As it is within the “working class” – TOWIE vs. Geordie Shore – there are also different subspecies of “posh people” – Made in Chelsea vs Oxbridge. Laura Wade’s Posh, directed by Lyndsey Turner in this Royal Court production, deals with the latter: a group of rambunctious Riot Club members – modelled on that institution the press love to hate, Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club – wanting to become part of the dinner club’s long tradition and history of messy high-jinx.
Base, crude and downright vile these chaps are… but very, very funny – lewd humour will always go down a treat with the sex-coy Brits. And for the non-Brits, the play provides an idiosyncratic view onto one of the country’s many social stereotypes. The ten Riot Club members bounce off each other brilliantly – seamlessly one minute, rowdily the next – the whole greater than the sum of its talented parts. While individual members of the cast get moments to stand out – Max Bennett making a regal entrance, Harry Lister-Smith as the eager-beaver newbie and Leo Bill as the enraged and embittered Alistair Ryle – the group’s dynamic is the overpowering factor here.
It is curious how Wade – as a woman from Sheffield who did not attend either Oxford or Cambridge – was able to create such detailed and witty characters and dialogue that did not succumb to the clichés that a less deft playwright might have done. Luckily, the production becomes more about the high-spirits (as it were) of youth and immaturity than about the social implications of the country’s class divide. While it no doubt raises issues that could spiral into full-blown debates, these are diluted with lots of banter and brawling, leading to a very sinister ending. Quite a U-turn from the A capella/beat-box, gentrified renditions of Tinie Tempah and LMFAO that go down a storm on several occasions throughout proceedings.
Whether or not Posh was intended to stir up hatred and resentment towards the privileged, the play only reinforces the maxim “boys will be boys”. The boisterous behaviour witnessed at the Bull’s Head is nothing more than what (British) males in their early 20s in an all-male environment have been doing through the ages, regardless of bloodline.
