Posh

In an oak-panelled room in a rural Oxford gastropub, ten young undergraduates with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule - and on getting totally "chatueaued". Members of The Riot Club, an elite student dining society, the fraternity starts to fray when they discover they're a guinea-fowl short and the prostitute they've hired is suddenly banished.

An apparent spoof on Oxford's notorious Bullingdon Club, whose past members include Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron, Posh is a satirical play about power, politics and privilege, and how these elements interact within British institutions.

The play is published here as a Methuen Drama Student Edition with commentary and notes by Henry Bell. Posh premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2010 and two years later opened in the West End. It was nominated for Best New Play at both the Evening Standard Awards and for the Theatregoers' Choice Awards. It was subsequently made into a film called The Riot Club (2014), starring Sam Claflin, Max Irons and Douglas Booth.

Laura Wade is an Olivier-award winning playwright and screenwriter. Her play Home, I'm Darling premiered at Theatr Clwyd in 2018 before playing at the National Theatre and won the award for Best New Comedy at the 2019 Oliviers. In 2018 she adapted Jane Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons for the stage for Chichester Festival Theatre. In 2015 she adapted Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet for the stage and it premiered at the Lyric Hammersmith before transferring to the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Her screenplay The Riot Club, an adaptation of her 2010 stage play Posh, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014 and opened in cinemas on September 2014. Posh opened in the West End at the Duke of York’s Theatre in 2012 after its premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2010.

Henry Bell is Senior Lecturer in Performance at University of the West of Scotland, UK. Prior to academia, he worked as a professional theatre director and applied theatre practitioner.