GAME OF THRONES' Hannah Murray to Lead an All-Female Cast in a Thrilling New Production of POSH

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.

Hannah Murray, named Best Actress at the Tribeca Film Festival for her portrayal of 'Sara' in the Danish film Bridgend, was last seen on stage in London in Martine at the Finborough Theatre, for which she was nominated 'Best Female Performance' at the Off West End Awards. Hannah made her West End debut in Polly Stenham's That Face at the Royal Court and her breakthrough role was playing 'Cassie' in E4's cult series Skins, before going on to star in features Chatroom, God Help The Girl, Lily and Kat and The Chosen. She will next be seen reprising the role of 'Gilly' in the final series of HBO/SKY series Game of Thrones and in August she will take on one of the lead roles in Katherine Bigelow's Untitled Detroit Project, set in 1967, about one of the largest citizen uprisings in the United States' history.

Hannah Murray said: "I am so excited to be a part of this production, it's a fascinating opportunity to explore and investigate the nature of privilege - a topic I feel there is an increasing urgency to examine and discuss. Working with an all-female ensemble cast is a brilliant opportunity to collaborate with a fantastic company of talented women, which is not something that happens often enough."

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).

Creative team:
Director Cressida Carré
Set & Costume Designer Sara Perks
Co-Costume Designer Sarah Mills
Lighting Designer Derek Anderson
Sound Designer Harry Barker
Producer Tom Harrop for Can't Think Theatre Company

Cressida Carré (Director)
Cressida won the Off West End Award for Best Choreography for the UK premiere of Titanic. The production opened at Southwark Playhouse, transferred to Toronto, Canada and was then restaged at Charing Cross Theatre. As a director, her other work includes: Avenue Q (UK tour 2014/15/16 & Hong Kong), Spear (Courtyard Theatre Hereford), The Lost Christmas (Trafalgar Studios), Betwixt (Edinburgh Festival), Marry Me A Little (Etcetera Theatre).

Cressida Carré 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)
Laura Wade's plays include Posh (Royal Court Theatre and West End), Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith), Alice (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield), Kreutzer vs. Kreutzer (Globe Theatre, Sydney Opera House and Australian tour), Other Hands (Soho Theatre), Colder Than Here (Soho Theatre and MCC Theatre New York), Breathing Corpses (Royal Court Theatre), Catch (Royal Court Theatre, written with four other playwrights), Young Emma (Finborough Theatre), 16 Winters (Bristol Old Vic Basement) and Limbo (Crucible Studio Theatre, Sheffield). Films include The Riot Club. Laura Wade trained with The Royal Court Theatre's Young Writers Programme in London, and was a Writer on Attachment at Soho Theatre. Awards include the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, the Pearson Best Play Award and the George Devine Award. Laura Wade's plays have been performed in the UK, USA, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Mexico.

Laura Wade 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."

For tickets and more information, call the Box Office 020 7609 1800 or visit www.pleasance.co.uk or www.poshtheplay.co.uk.

Photo credit: Jason Alden

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