To the common eye, the scene laid out in the Old Fitz Theatre (designed by Soham Apte) may appear lavish: a long oak table prepared for a feast; walls of wooden panelling and patterned green wallpaper; gilded portraits of dead aristocrats; an icy chandelier glittering above it all. But to the Oxford boys of the Riot Club, this private dining room of a regional gastro pub is a humiliating exile. Not only that – staffed by a father and daughter who aren’t educated in the natural, money-greased rules of subordination to their ‘betters’ – it’s an existential threat.
The ten members of this exclusive club were banished here, on the outskirts of London, to host their next dinner (a quarterly custom) after one of them breached the strict pact of absolute secrecy. Once open and proud, their bizarre rituals of excess must now keep to the shadows. Gone are the days of legendary mayhem and glorious carnage without consequence; when their promised inheritance of seats of national power was iron-clad. (Or are they?)
As entertaining as it is savage...
A dark comedy turned social horror over two acts penned by UK playwright Laura Wade in 2014, Posh is a study into how the “good old boys” have survived society’s staggered lunges towards equality over the last century. Inspired by real-life events, we see two generations conspiring to uphold the obscene traditions of class entitlement, patriarchal privilege, and their cashed-up “right” to do whatever they want. Director Margaret Thanos (Furious Mattress), whose name is becoming a stamp of great promise in Sydney, masterfully orchestrates the physical and psychic, the silly japes and the ugly underbelly. You get the feeling she’s encountered this type of pedigreed rotter before, in some slimy iteration.
The cast are uniformly convincing as snotty brutes. Aloma Barnes Siraswar has dressed them up as a band of young men LARP’ing the gentry, with pin-striped trousers, tailcoats and cream-coloured bow ties. Their strange, seemingly anachronistic brotherhood has its own elaborate hierarchies – some of them shifting, others absolute. Dmitri (Anthony Yangoyan, in a cravat) cannot escape being Greek, with his heritage and country’s floundering economy remorselessly mocked. Hugo (Jack Richardson, hilarious in his outbursts, looking like a European Count with platinum slicked-back hair and a dark goatee) cannot escape being gay.
Meanwhile, AJ Evans’s Harry boisterously leads the degenerate charge (volunteer jizzer for hazing rites, who also sneaks in a “prozzo”); Ryan Hodson’s James faces mutiny as club captain for being soft on the poor; and an unfortunate Dylan O'Connor must scull many glasses of red liquid as a late punishment for getting them embroiled in a Daily Mail scandal.
The first half of Posh is a whirlwind of great yet queasy larks. There’s a faux pas with the foie gras – resulting in a “ten-bird roast” which stands as a monstrous, symbolic spectacle of stuffed meat. You can’t help but laugh at the little lords using “sniffy” as ponce slang for cocaine, or at their intoned toast to the “dead members” that came before. Another moment mixing hilarity with dread: when the “salt of the earth” type landlord, Chris (Mike Booth), joins (without welcome) the boys’ spontaneous chorus line of ‘God Save the Queen’. There is even a ghostly visitation from the club’s founder, Lord Riot, or “Ryott” (Charles Mayer).
By the second act, the boys have scraped off the oleaginous charm coating their contempt. The violence dancing on the edges of their playfulness declares war. Chris and his bright, wary daughter Rachel (Dominique Purdue) are inevitable targets of their righteous rampage. Things can never be taken too far, Wade’s play implies, and there is always a way out. This is illuminated most in Christian Paul Byers’s character, Alistair, who is first betrayed by the brotherhood, then inducted into its inner circle.
As entertaining as it is savage, Posh comes out of Thanos’s Queen Hades Productions, a company that intersects art with activism, and hopes to make the world a “a weirder, better place”. In this production, these noble twinned goals are satisfied.
Posh is playing at Old Fitz Theatre (downstairs at the Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomooloo) until May 11, 2025. Tickets are on sale over here.
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