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.