'Alma Mater' review — Justine Mitchell has masterly control over this heated study of rape culture

Read our review of Kendall Feaver's campus drama Alma Mater, now in performances at the Almeida Theatre to 20 July.

Is there a more quietly essential actress these days than Justine Mitchell, the Irish performer who illuminates every production in which she appears – of which, happily, there has been no shortage of late?

Proof of her distinctive radiance can currently be found on the Almeida stage in Alma Mater, in which Mitchell has replaced an indisposed Lia Williams in the pivotal role of an English academic, Jo, thereby delaying the press night.

The first female “master” of an unnamed university that has had a chequered history, the onetime journalist Jo finds herself in an ideological crossfire played out in Polly Findlay’s alert production with the actors seated ringside when not in the scene – until Kendall Feaver’s revelation-prone writing nears a peculiar close that shifts attention unexpectedly away from Jo and towards a spectral figure from this institution’s blighted past.

Performing script in hand just in case, though actually glancing at it pretty rarely, Mitchell anchors an issue-laden play of ideas that is nonetheless always rooted in character, not polemic.

Like any good play of this sort, you find yourself nodding in assent to one point of view only to soon be taken by another perspective altogether: Jo’s attempt to stay on course against intensifying odds makes for altogether gripping theatre over which Mitchell has what can only be called masterly control.

The gladiatorial arena suggested by Vicki Mortimer’s design makes sense: characters no sooner emerge before they complicate an argument that is far more satisfyingly labyrinthine than the open-and-shut case it may appear at the start.

Amidst a landscape where (as happens) even a so-called friend can suddenly announce deep-seated dislike, Jo must navigate increasingly treacherous waters that find students, parents, and colleagues occupying shifting points on a spectrum centered around an accusation of sexual assault.

New student Paige (Liv Hill) has marked her first night on campus by having non-consensual sex, which in turn leads to a thicket of accusation that ensnares both the mother of the unseen perpetrator – a tremendous Susannah Wise, making a late appearance in the play – and a vigilant fellow student, Nikki (Phoebe Campbell), who is hyper-aware of the sexually treacherous landscape around her. (A crucial aspect of the plot owes a debt of sorts to The Social Network.)

The older generation weighs in, not always in agreement. Jo may be unexpectedly sweary – her language at the play’s opening is not for the squeamish – but she’s always attentive to the impact of words and finds herself setting her perception of events, and her job future, against both an academic grandee, Michael (Nathaniel Parker), and this same lecturer’s wife, Leila (Nathalie Armin), who sees nothing wrong with having sex in unusual locations. After all, isn’t that what students are prone to do?

The published text varies significantly from what I saw enacted the other evening, and I’m not convinced that the ending, as it now is, rounds off a play that seems to foreground Jo only to sideline her when her presence is most required.

But for all the ructions attending the production, Findlay steers it with a cool, keen eye for the heated rhetoric it contains, and Mitchell, on or off book, takes fearless command of some pretty fierce material: rape culture at its most ruinous in a play that functions its own way as a sustained roar.

Alma Mater is at the Almeida through 20 July.

Photo credit: Alma Mater (Photos by Ali Wright)