Alma Mater
Almeida, London

THE power of Kendall Feaver’s Alma Mater at first seems to lie in its central theme: the battle of feminism in a still profoundly male-dominated world.

The setting is an Oxford College. The “master” of the college is Jo, the first woman ever to fill the role. A student in her third year (Nikki) has become a classic activist who confronts Jo with a terrible reality: namely that a rampant “rape culture” thrives on her watch. Meanwhile new student Paige is raped on her first night at the college by a “nice” studious boy who ignores the concept of consent because he’s drunk – or so his mother later explains. Bad boy behaviour is thus rife but barely recognised by the college hierarchy. 

Many details in the play resonate with us; we know them already from other contexts. And the plethora of stories that emerge bring to mind a range of media reports, other plays  we’ve seen, films and familiar rhetoric... nothing new here. But it is the diversity of feminist argument – interspersed with subtle questions around race and religion – that marks out the work and excites an audience already schooled in political labelling and social-media-style denouncement.

The question is: what new thoughts do we take from the play, and what in the end does it make us care about? 

Here the production team and cast help enormously. Polly Findlay directs with power and panache while Vicki Mortimer brings us a surreal set that feels like a crypt. Alev Lenz creates opening and closing choral music in which predominantly female voices mourn like ancient ghosts, under the musical direction of Toby Higgins, and a defaced painting of a sometime feminist is so placed on stage that we can’t take our eyes off it. 

Justine Mitchell brings us a splendidly credible Jo. While shaky at times from her speedy last-minute takeover from Lia Williams, her body language enhances her words in exemplary style. Liv Hill as Paige perfectly treads the line between distress and fight-back and Nathaniel Parker brings us the oh-so-familiar complacent man who – as Professor Danfield, chair of the college governors – unwittingly personifies the man whose place in the world is truly unassailable. 

The flaw in the play is in the overpowering authorial voice that dominates the characters, each delivering a different aspect of the argument while conforming to the uniform tone and speechifying style of the whole. It is the actors, rather than the writer, who superbly introduce the humanity and the light and shade. In particular it is Phoebe Campbell as the vehement but vulnerable Nikki, who steers this play firmly to land and brings us the euphoria.

For, in the end, this play raises but does not progress its feminist arguments, powerful as they are. Instead, it distils for us one absolute certainty: that only with the leadership of activists and zealots can change happen.

Moved by Nikki, we leave in revolutionary fervour, knowing that change to the establishment is a long, hard, continuous journey, but a must. 

Runs until July 20. Box Office: 020 7359 4404, almeida.co.uk