In an oak-panelled room in Oxford, ten young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine. But this isn’t just a jolly: they’re planning a revolution. Welcome to the Riot Club.
Reviews
The Observer
Kate Kellaway
“Sympathetic she is not, but there is a penetrating intelligence behind Wade's every line. As the men get obscenely blotto, any character they might have as individuals retreats. Wade registers the violent escapism of being a posh mob. And what a writer she is. She nails the truth – it's in the language itself – that class might be something to hide as well as flaunt. The brilliant dialogue is weirdly laced with streetwise slang alongside posh jargon: "savage" for good, "boff" for having sex, "chateaued" for drunk.
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27/05/2012
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The Stage
Aleks Sierz
“Posh’s analysis of the latent violence of class antagonism is satirical, grimly hilarious and richly symbolic - it’s a terrific piece of new writing.”
24/05/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Charles Spencer
“As the evening progresses, however, the mood turns increasingly dark and more violent, for Wade wants to show that there is a strain of evil in at least some of the characters, she depicts, and moral cowardice, too. And I suspect we are expected to draw the conclusion that the damage the club members inflict on the pub and its employees precisely mirrors the damage the Tories are now doing to Britain with their cuts and their austerity programme.”
24/05/2012
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The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
“Wade deftly skewers the sense of entitlement that swirls like a sickly perfume around a certain kind of upper-class thug. Her characters seem to have everything, yet whinge relentlessly. When the play was first staged, Labour was in power. The situation is different now, but the Riot Club aren’t impressed by the Coalition, and their resentment positively seethes. It’s a problem that Wade’s gilded youth seem quite so lacking in decency. Only the disenchanted club president hints at reserves of humanity. There’s little to suggest the possibility of a world that’s not as heartless as the one the rollicking toffs embody.”
24/05/2012
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The Guardian
Michael Billington
“I still feel the extreme violence that we see in the second act is a bit forced, as if The Lord of the Flies has suddenly entered the world of Evelyn Waugh. And I wish Wade had made the still small voice of conscience, chiefly represented by the club's president, a bit stronger. But, on a second viewing, it becomes clear that Wade's chief target is not just privileged toffs but the cosy network that really runs Britain.”
23/05/2012
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The Independent
Paul Taylor
“One-sided in its sympathies, Posh presents us with specimens representing a grotesquely engorged sense of entitlement rather than with people who have the right, like all of us, not to be branded in advance because of our parentage. Uniformly repellent and self-serving, these uppish undergrads never even seem particularly bright, when it's the brilliance of some of them that, along with their connections, make them so dangerous ... Like the "10-bird roast" that turns out to be one fowl short of the full culinary barnyard, Posh is one dimension short of being a great play.”
24/05/2012
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The Sunday Times
Jane Edwardes
“Despite the new government, Leo Bill’s scary Alistair still seethes with resentment that the people no longer bow to those with “the finest sperm in the country”. In the midst of so much nastiness, the a cappella singing is a relief.”
27/05/2012
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