Tuesday, February 17, 2015
By Lindsay Johns for the Daily Mail
Published: 11:52 GMT, 28 May 2012 | Updated: 15:17 GMT, 28 May 2012The other night I saw Posh by Laura Wade at the Duke of York’s theatre. First staged at the Royal Court in the summer of 2010, this vituperative, intelligent and excoriating production is a real theatrical treat.
In fact, I would urge all who care about our country, how it is being governed and by whom to make haste and go see it.
Given the make up of the current cabinet, their respective backgrounds and the recent publication of their wealth in the Cabinet Rich List, and coming so soon after Conservative MP Nadine Dorries even called the PM and the Chancellor 'a pair of arrogant posh boys who don’t know the price of milk', Posh is a painfully timely and relevant play which speaks in vociferous (yet never strident) terms about British society’s Achilles’ heel: its perennial obsession with class and class consciousness.
Getting chateaued: Hooray Henrys indulge in hedonism and alcohol-soaked badinage in Posh at The Duke of York's Theatre Posh tells the story of a dinner of the Riot Club, an exclusive Oxford undergraduate dining society for landed gentry which specializes in debauched hedonism, garrulous, alcohol-soaked badinage, vulgar, unashamedly ostentatious displays of wealth and canny networking for the future.
The fictitious club is of course modelled on the infamous Bullingdon, of which Cameron, Osborne and Boris Johnson were all former members.
The jarring Hooray Henry lexicon (e.g. 'getting chateaued' for drunk), the verbal jousting between fragile egos eager for one-upmanship within the club’s rigid hierarchy, the endemic casual racism and the overwhelming sense of entitlement possessed by these obnoxious oiks are all depicted with acute aplomb and are both trenchantly observed and disturbing to watch in turn.
But this play is about something far bigger and far more important than unbridled licentiousness, nauseatingly drunken student debauchery and the ebullient hijinks of privileged scions of the Establishment.
The fictitious Riot Club is modelled on the infamous Bullingdon, of which Cameron, Osborne and Boris Johnson were all former members Posh is essentially about the elite – those who self-consciously possess 'the finest sperm in the country' – how they perceive themselves and how they are groomed to govern. And how, with Machiavellian duplicity and guile, they perennially adapt to changing circumstances, forever remaining on top.
The play is both a lesson in social Darwinism, the way the elite morphs to still retain power, and how they choose to exercise that power over others. Moreover, on one level, one is but left with the crushing conclusion that the game is in many ways rigged in their favour and will be for the foreseeable future.
The sight of this obnoxious tranche of the jeunesse doree running around the private room of a provincial gastropub outside of Oxford with their trousers rolled up to their knees playing musical chairs as a prelude to a night’s debauchery is, when seen for all its worth, truly pathetic and worthy of pity.
The speeches of exculpation which Wade puts into the mouths of her characters, when expounding the notion that the upper classes are now the new, viciously oppressed minority in this country - are highly amusing, given the heartfelt conviction with which they genuinely believe it.
MP Nadine Dorries called the PM and the Chancellor 'a pair of arrogant posh boys who don’t know the price of milk'One oleaginous, truly loathsome character even announces, in an impassioned, seething soliloquy – itself a clarion call to class warfare, 'I ****ing hate poor people!' The casual violence into which the evening quickly descends, and the searing moral cowardice which ensues, are likewise both appalling and revealing of the elites and their “save myself at all costs” mentality.
Wade, despite her manifestly left-wing ideals, actually puts many ostensibly sympathetic lines into the mouths of her posh characters, thus saving them from being one-dimensional figures of scorn and derision who the audience can love to hate.
When I was at Oxford, I was only vaguely aware of the existence of this somewhat clandestine netherworld, as I stood a million miles in every sense from its hallowed portals. (I still thank my lucky stars that the vast majoirty of people in Oxford were normal!)
I for one, as a mixed-race, teetotaller of working / lower middle class stock, hardly fitted the bill and would never have been admitted to their hermetic club. Nor, I stress, would I ever have wanted to. They were as much anathema to me as I was to them.
As someone who yearns to live in a true intellectual and social meritocracy, where people of all backgrounds, colours and creeds are judged solely on their ability, intellect and strength of character, not daddy’s money or connections, this play struck a powerful chord with me.
I have no problem being governed by old Etonians and an Oxbridge elite, as long as (and I stress) they are resolutely the best men (or women) for the job. It is an undeniable fact – and one which we would be churlish to attempt to deny - that the fortunate possessors of a Rolls-Royce education are often more up to the task than those not as well-educated.
But the idea of being governed by well-connected Tim 'Nice But Dims,' daddy’s boys and vacuous patrician types who just happened to attend top institutions but fundamentally lack the substance, the intellectual ability, the moral fibre or the integrity for the job fills me with genuine horror and disgust.
By the same token, nor do I care for the PM’s hideously faux-demotic decision to dress down for a recent wedding (for fear of being perceived as a toff if he wore the traditional morning suit) or to take budget flights on holiday, when as a multi-millionaire he can well afford something a tad more luxurious than a 'no frills' cheap flight.
The sentiment might be well-meaning (or merely self-serving), but it can also be construed as patronizing and offensive. Is he really in the same boat as those who can only afford to travel on Ryanair? I seriously doubt it.
With Nick Clegg (Westminster and Cambridge) just last week having made a somewhat hypocritical speech about social mobility and education, I think Messiers 'Call Me Dave' Cameron, his increasingly beleaguered deputy Clegg and the forever perniciously rictus-grinning (or is it smirking?) Osborne would be well advised to watch Posh. Whilst reminiscing about the similarities of the play’s events to the japes of their own 'salad days', they would do well to gravely consider the legacy that their current actions are in the process of bequeathing to this country.
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