Posh

Posted on 2012/08/04 10:31:12 (August 2012).

[Monday 30th July 2012]
Went to see Laura Wade's Posh at the Duke of York's Theatre. Here's my review:

Overall I enjoyed it, although I think probably more the first act than the second. In the first act, Posh has fun with the upper class stereotypes who form the bulk of its cast, and it's pretty much all comedy. In a lot of the reviews I've read the reviewer seems to feel it important to point out how they see it as an entirely unsympathetic portrayal of the upper classes. Looking at the first act in isolation, I'm not really sure that's true - I'm fairly sure the audience were laughing along with them, and the occasional "oooooh" noises which presumably were trying to convey a collective "did they really just say that?" seemed a little forced and artificial. I imagined Vic and Bob raising their handbags. Some parts of the dialogue are clearly a very deliberate attempt to make their complaints about the upper class first world problems they face stand out as untenable - the National Trust having taken over control of their country estates, for example. At other times their ranting about the banal, small minded jobsworth attitudes of the modern day middle classes did seem to contain some credible substance, along with the contradiction that the upper classes were simultaneously loathed by the rest of the population, and yet something they all seemed to try to aspire to. Asparagus being a particular bone of contention.

In the second act it darkens somewhat, and there's not really a lot of humour. I found the change of atmosphere kind of jarring actually, and it was almost as if we, the audience, were being remonstrated for having found the snobbery in the first act amusing. The violent outburst just didn't really fit the rest of the play, in my opinion, and the aftermath seemed a slightly clumsy attempt to underline the characters as flawed individuals - the hubris of act one replaced by cowardice in act two.

The epilogue seems to have caused consternation in other reviews - and there I agree with them. It appears to suggest the main perpetrator is going to be helped by the establishment, will likely get away with it, and moreover the incident seems to further his career. So I'm a bit confused about what the moral of the story is supposed to be.

I am left with the opinion that actually the main entertainment value in this play is in the humour that derives from the unfettered snobbery of act one, spliced as it is with the a capella songs, which similarly draw their humour from our image of a self confident but eccentric and out of touch upper class. Despite what other reviewers say, there is something clearly likeable about these characters (perhaps in a Blackadder sense of "likeable"), at least during the first act, but it is as if the playwright panicked about being on the wrong side of common public opinion, and felt compelled to paint them in a purely negative light in act two.

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