It’s a beautifully sunny day in Bristol and I’m heading over to the Bristol Old Vic to see ‘Eat The Rich (but maybe not me mates x),’ by Jade Franks. The show, currently being developed by Netflix as a TV series, began life as stand-up sets before Franks worked it into a full play. A Herculean struggle to the Fringe was rewarded by rave reviews and a Fringe First award in 2025. 

Franks strides onto the stage with a poise and charisma that is immediately endearing, wearing a short running outfit and thick fake eyelashes. She gets right into it, telling us how after school she felt stuck in a job at a call centre, dreaming of what her life could be as she browsed the Cambridge University website. Soon, she has moved from her native Liverpool down south ahead of the start of term and started work as a cleaner to fund her studies. She sets up the world well; her burgeoning friendship with her colleague Christina, while other students are still distant, romantic figures, then the influx of lectures, cliques, stereotypes and a constant feeling of alienation over everything from her outfits on nights out to what school she went to. The staging is centred around an old-fashioned school-style desk, which opens up to allow props and outfit changes, including a pair of huge gold heels that give her a ‘bird’s eye view’ of a dinner party faux pas. 

Franks ad libs and winks at the audience as she goes (‘You won’t believe how much stuff is in this desk,’ as it gets stuck on a bit of clothing), and they are fully onside, chuckling and gasping as we watch her rising sense of distance as she progresses through her first term, meeting both allies (a tolerably posh gay man called Hermes) and enemies (a clique of posh girls who are don’t think twice about questioning everything about her, ‘like the witches from Macbeth if they shopped at Oliver Bonas’) while struggling to keep up with her studies. Music and flashing lights take us through various student settings; one of the three Cambridge clubs, the ridiculously formal dinners, and getting ready in her room. There are some brilliant one-liners and Franks’ delivery is excellent, managing the switches in tone from romance to bafflement to terror as she realises her peers are about to discover her job.  Occasionally I thought it would have been interesting to have a bit more insight into  her emotional state moment-to-moment, such as when she begins struggling with her studies and how this made her feel having dreamed about it for so long, or where she dreamed studying at Cambridge would take her. 

But it feels effortlessly vivid and fun, and Franks deserves all the success the show is bringing her.