She has glittery nail extensions and her hair scraped back. On a night out, she is all fluttering eyelashes and enormous gold platforms. She is not the picture of your average Cambridge undergraduate. Which is exactly the point of this tremendous solo show in which Jade Franks – remember the name – skewers the institution of class privilege in a performance that is as funny as it is politically stinging.
She writes from experience. A child of working-class Liverpool (her parents are in the front row at my performance, adding to the backchatting merriment), Franks is employed at a call centre when inspiration strikes. She was always good at school and full of ambition – why shouldn’t she apply to Oxbridge?
It is a mere detail that she has to work out where Oxbridge is. She is not easily deterred.
One outreach programme later, she is on her way south, moving to Cambridge early to get set up with a cleaning job. What follows in Tatenda Shamiso’s razor-sharp production is a culture-clash comedy in the tradition of Pygmalion and Educating Rita (what I’d give to see Franks star in Willy Russell’s play).
Her deadpan wit sustains the performance, jokes lining up with jokes by the line, but what drives it all is deep rage. Yes, there are the gags about men who wear jumpers over their shoulders, the arcane hierarchy of schools and the endless skiing holidays. But for all the absurdity of ruling-class behaviour, it is not funny to be sniggered at, patronised and demeaned, to have to make a secret of earning a wage and to hear your accent being parroted back to you.
More than that, some of the students she meets, blind to their privilege, revelling in their ignorance, will go on to be politicians, even prime ministers, making decisions about people of whom they know little and could care less. In that, Eat the Rich drills deeper than just one woman’s story of exclusion. Rather, it is a damning portrait of a dysfunctional social order.
Change is long overdue, but at least with Franks leading the rallying cry, this revolution will be a right good laugh.