“They’re really not stereotypical posh people,” Pete (Tom Stourton) tells his girlfriend Sonia (Charly Clive), somewhat pleadingly. They’re headed down to Devon for his 31st birthday, about to reunite with a group of university friends he hasn’t seen in nearly a decade. He’s really doing his best to sound reassuring. But he knows he’s lying. So does the audience. Within minutes, that’s how Andrew Gaynord’s darkly comic All My Friends Hate Me clues us in to the fact that Pete is that uniquely insufferable brand of person: the self-hating rich kid.
Soon enough, Pete’s perched on the edge of a brocade-patterned settee with his glass of white wine, pulling out superficially wholesome stories about refugee children he’s met doing charity work abroad. That’s when he’s not rolling his eyes at his toff mate’s (Graham Dickson) business proposals – something about an app that lets rich people go abseiling without having to interact with the plebs. When his friends bring along Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), a boisterous stranger they met down the pub, Pete’s immediately troubled by the way they all seem to treat him like a sideshow attraction. “You’ll love him, a real local,” they assure him, as Harry comes sauntering in with a duck underneath his arm.
