OLD MONEY. NEW PROBLEMS. DIFFERENT GENDER.
Hannah Murray (Skins, Game of Thrones, Untitled Detroit Project) is to lead the cast for the world premiere of an all-female version of Posh. Full casting for the production has been announced today.
This thrilling new production, which will run at London’s Pleasance Theatre from 29th March, gives Laura Wade’s play a new, topical voice by allowing women to take centre stage in roles originally written for men. The production will be directed by Off West End Award winner Cressida Carré.
Darkly comic, and disgracefully entertaining, Laura Wade’s universally acclaimed Posh, burst to life at the Royal Court theatre in 2010 with a cast that featured future stars Kit Harrington and James Norton, before transferring to the West End. Receiving a fanfare of plaudits, Posh became a huge hit with critics and audience alike.
Now the riotous story of Oxford student dining club, a fictionalised version of the infamous Bullingdon Club, will be reinvented for the first time by a company of all-female actors.
In the private dining room of a gastro pub, 10 young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. As members of an elite student dining society, they’re bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine.
This thrilling new production has a topical voice. However, this isn’t just a jolly: these women are planning a revolution. Welcome to the Riot Club.
Posh was long-listed as Best New Play in the Evening Standard Awards and nominated Best New Play in the Whatsonstage Awards. It was filmed in 2014 for cinema release as The Riot Club, directed by Lone Scherfig and starring Max Irons, Sam Claflin, Freddie Fox and Douglas Booth.
The rest of the cast features Lucy Aarden (Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, 1st Witch, Macbeth, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Greenwich Theatre); Cassie Bradley (at the National Theatre, Husbands and Sons and Nurse in Sam Mendes’ King Lear); Alice Brittain (Trevor Nunn’s The War of the Roses at the Rose, Kingston); Molly Hanson (Hermia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Windsor); Verity Kirk (Cate in Sarah Kane’s Blasted at STYX); Macy Nyman (Wendy in Peter Pan, Exeter Northcott), Toni Peach (Beetles From The West, Barbican Theatre, Plymouth; Jessica Siân (White Lead at Hampstead Theatre); Sarah Thom (Tom Hardy’s Taboo, Bette Davis in Bette & Joan – The Final Curtain, St James Theatre); Gabby Wong (West End includes understudied and played Mephistopheles in Doctor Fautus at the Duke of York’s, and for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Volpone,The Jew of Malta, Love’s Sacrifice. She was Gold Nine in the Star Wars film Rogue One); Amani Zardoe (has just finished filming Victoria & Abdul with Judi Dench. She is also filming Will for TNT. Her stage roles include The Spoils at Trafalgar 1 and Measure for Measure at Shakespeare’s Globe).
Cressida Carré (Director) said: “I am so looking forward to exploring the play with this fantastic all-female cast. We are in a very exciting time in theatre where existing works are being turned on their head giving us so much more potential to play with and the reinvention of many are opening up our perceptions in so many ways. Gender equality, privilege and class are certainly topics which are prevalent today and it will be exciting to see what happens when these historically male characters are played by women.”
Laura Wade (Writer) said: “It’s always interesting to see a new cast take on Posh, but it’ll be fascinating to see what light an all-female company can throw on the play’s world of power and privilege. I’m often asked what Posh would have been like if there were women in the Riot Club instead of men. Perhaps now I get to find out.”
POSH plays at the Pleasance Theatre 29 March – 22 April 2017
Photo: Jason Alden
