HER RIOTOUSLY funny look at upper class twits on the rampage, in no way inspired by Boris Johnson and David Cameron's Bullingdon Club antics, earned rave reviews and a West End transfer.
Following the success of Posh, writer Laura Wade has updated Other Hands, a comic look at the way technology increasingly encroaches on our everyday relations, written six years ago, for Hammersmith's Riverside Studios.
LAURA Wade's sharply scripted comedy Posh brilliantly punctured the inflated egos of Britain's privileged upper classes.
In Other Hands, originally written six years ago, but updated for its brief run at Hammersmith's Riverside Studios, she turns her attention to the overwhelming onslaught of technology.
Wade admits she is slow on the uptake when it comes to advances in technology.
She has yet to join Facebook or Twitter but denies being a Luddite, instead putting it down to a mixture of laziness and stubborn-mindedness.
"I can't be bothered working out how to transfer my contact list to a new iPhone, so I'm happy to keep the one I've got until it gets broken or I drop it down the loo," she says.
"In terms of my social use of technology I'm way behind. I don’t quite see the appeal of social networking, it all feels a bit performative to me - and by that, potentially (and paradoxically) isolating.
"I question the quality of those kind of interactions. But at this stage there’s a very real chance that my refusal to join is just stubbornness, and at some point I’ll be forced to cave, for fear of never being invited to a party again."
Despite her reluctance to embrace the digital age, Wade is as reliant on technology as the next person and it was a visit from an IT expert after her computer broke down which inspired Other Hands.
"I was struck by how drastically important he had become to me, and by how helpless I felt," she says.
"It seemed like an interesting dynamic between two characters, and between those characters and the machines around them."
Even in the six years since writing Other Hands, Wade believes our reliance on technology has increased and our understanding of the gadgets we use has continued to diminish.
"My parents' generation would respond to something being broken by unscrewing the back of it and taking a look at what’s inside. You can’t unscrew the back of an iPhone, so it makes the user of that device powerless in some way," she says.
"Of course, the products we use have got ever more easy to use - I just installed broadband in my new home and it was an absolute doddle, which it would never have been in the days of dial-up modems.
"But when they fail it can be utterly baffling to try to work out why. Hence our need for people like Steve in the play."
Despite the unstoppable advance of technology, and, in particular, social networking, Wade believes it will never completely replace face-to-face communication.
"In terms of our interaction with each other, I suppose we've become ever more reliant on virtual ways of doing so - with all the self-selection that that entails," she says.
"To me it still feels relevant for the play to explore the possibilities that exist when you meet a stranger that surprises you, and our need for attention from the people around us."
Other Hands is at the Riverside Studios, in Hammersmith, from October 23-28. For tickets, visit www.riversidestudios.co.uk or call the box office on 020 8237 1111.
