ANDY HEDGECOCK sees his scepticism lessened by a story is more complex and far-reaching than is initially apparent
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The necessity of activism
MARY CONWAY evaluates a polemical play whose actors, rather than the writer, introduce the humanity and the light and shade
CAMPUS ACTIVISM: Phoebe Campbell in Alma Mater
[Marc Brenner] 
MARK TURNER holds on tight for a mesmerising display of Neath-born ragtime virtuosity
ALAN MORRISON introduces a UK poet whose despised daytime occupation provides the subject for his writing
MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long
PAUL DONOVAN recommends three new books that explore the human relationship with nature
Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller
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.
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