The British Empire created a private school system to train up the administrators of its various systems of pillage, whether that was slavery, colonialism or just plain hit-and-run capitalism.
Schooling had to develop the qualities of unprincipled brutality. Never mind it also delivered men who anaesthetised themselves in drink, drugs and violent sexual adventures.
Trust sits in the tradition of plays like Lucy Wade’s Posh, which was later filmed as The Riot Club. It lets us glimpse the off-duty socialising of four recent university students aged about twenty-five and Verity aged nineteen.
Half-drunk bottles of wine sit on the table and occasionally the lads snort a bit of heavier stuff. They are amused by their recent antics such as leaning out of a window on a boys' trip to Croatia and being sick over women outside whom they referred to as “whores”.
Xavier (Marcus Judd) spends part of his time sexually with Lydia, though the pair of them would prefer to be sexually active with Charlie. But for people in their class, the requirements of money must shape their choices and also their secret repressions.
That means Charlie (Hamish Dicketts) needs to marry a suitable woman to get access to the family trust fund, though, on his wedding night, he might have a bit of a fling with Xavier.
Marriage would mean he can spend his honeymoon in Barbados, which his family have declared off-limits due to him killing someone with a car he was driving while having a sexual encounter.
Only Tom (Dylan Swain) seems to have any scruples or sensitivity, but then Xavier does suggest that masks a frighteningly abusive tendency.
The two women at this drink-sodden party are Lydia (Daisy Lillingston-Paterson), who reckons that going with the flow of a convenient sexual abandon will get her a place among the lads, and Verity (Emily Christaki), who on the other hand is clearly uneasy and nervous about her place among the boys, despite this being the night of her wedding.
They are an unpleasant lot, so we shouldn’t be surprised that someone is murdered. (That information is in the publicity for the show.)
The play is well performed but at times feels slightly rough in its improbable plot and characterisation. But then so is the brutal absurdity of the British class system that exists for the convenience of those in power.
Maybe it's time we changed it.