Written by Javaad Alipoor
Co-created by Javaad Alipoor and Kirsty Housley
In 2015 Robert Mugabe’s son, Chatunga, filmed himself pouring a £200 bottle of champagne over the £45,000 watch his father bought him, tagging it on instagram as #daddyrunsthewholecountry. At the height of the sanctions on Iran, with the middle and working classes choked, Mohammad Hossien Rabbani-Shirazi, the son of a prominent Ayatollah and the grandson of a revolutionary hero smashed his yellow Porsche Boxer into a kerb at 120 miles per hour killing himself and his girlfriend. His Instagram account went viral: pictures of him drinking and partying at nightclubs in Dubai, Antalya and West London. The gap between the rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger around the world. Social media feeds and accelerates this ever-widening divide. In the global south we see the children of elites and post-colonial dictatorships, flashing cash, dollar signs, Bollinger and infinity pool holidays while people suffer under sanctions and dictatorships.
Rich Kids is a play about entitlement and consumption, about how digital technology is complicit in social apartheid and gentrification, and the human problem of what successful and brutal people do with their coddled and useless children. It’s the sequel to the award-winning The Believers Are But Brothers, and the second part of a trilogy of plays about how digital technology, resentment and fracturing identity is changing the world.
Rich Kids is a Javaad Alipoor and HOME co-production, which is also co-commissioned by The Bush and Theatre in the Mill.
The Scotsman Fringe First Winner
★★★★ “Dazzling, discombobulating and alarming.” – The Guardian
★★★★ “Breaks all the rules of theatre behaviour… I was fascinated by both the subject and the way the show works.” – The Times (behind paywall)
★★★★ “[Javaad] Alipoor and co-performer Peyvand Sadeghian handle the complex technological elements of the show with style and seriousness, while weaving a hugely challenging web of thoughts and ideas about the hyper-connected world we now inhabit.” – The Scotsman
“Info-overload? For sure, but perhaps that’s the point.” – Daily Telegraph(behind paywall)
“A compelling experiment… Thrillingly idea-rich, ambitious and formally adventurous.” – The Stage
“An ambitious, sprawling show.” – The Observer
“Alipoor and his co-creator Kirsty Housley are the kind of people who really should be running the country, The White House, or even the world.” – What’s On Stage
“It’s witty in places, yet horrifying and as [Javaad] Alipoor and [Peyvand] Sadeghian turn the camera towards the audience, there’s a real sense of culpability, along with the affirming shared experience of theatre.” – The List
“As a theatrical embodiment of excess and confusion, Rich Kids is a sprawling, chaotic masterpiece.” – The Arts Desk