Jade Franks on Eat The Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates x): 'It gave people the chance to talk about things they’d carried quietly for years'
By day a Cambridge undergraduate, by night a secret cleaner, Jade Franks unpacks class, code-switching and the cost of ambition
Jade Franks led two lives: by day, the Scouser attempted to blend in with the Tarquins and Tillys lining the halls of Cambridge University in the UK. By night, she worked as a cleaner, something she kept strictly secret from her undergraduate peers. In this searing takedown of the destructive class divide still present in some of Britain’s most famed institutions, Franks lays bare her experience of being one of Oxbridge’s odd ones out. ‘It’s about class, shame, ambition, money and the weird code-switching you do when you’re moving between worlds that were never built for you,’ she explains.
A hot ticket at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, the show struck a chord with audiences. ‘People stayed to talk, cried, told me their own stories. It felt like it gave people the chance to talk about things they’d carried quietly for years,’ says Franks. She’s confident this will translate to Australian audiences. ‘Festivals like Adelaide Fringe are public spaces where big ideas meet large audiences. When the wealth gap is widening and social mobility is becoming more myth than reality, telling stories about class isn’t niche or political for the sake of it; it’s reflective of people’s actual lives.’ Also: ‘Margot Robbie saw it in London and was very kind… I’m just hoping she speaks for all Australians.’
Jade Franks on Eat The Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates x), Holden Street Theatres, 17 February–22 March, times vary; picture: Holly Revell.