Culture | Theatre I’d love to report that the belated opening of Kendall Feaver’s drama about the politics of sexual assault in an unnamed Oxford college is a triumph over adversity, but I can’t. The splendid Justine Mitchell stepped in to play feisty academic Jo Mulligan, the institution’s “first female master”, after the 11th-hour withdrawal of Lia Williams due to illness two weeks ago. Mitchell is riveting, even with a script in her hand at the press performance, and the issues the play raises are urgent.
Unfortunately, it’s utterly schematic in its provocative both-sidesing of every argument raised. Plot dictates character throughout. Designer Vicki Mortimer gives us a rectangle of benches – a lecture hall as boxing ring – and Polly Findlay’s halting production duly feels like a series of attacks and retaliations.
And even though the setting is meant to be emblematic of problems throughout the educational spectrum, this is still another bloody play about bloody Oxbridge. Mitchell’s Jo is a former foreign correspondent who drinks with her students, uses the C-word in academic addresses and is generally supposed to blow fresh air through the fusty institution where she studied years before. But having fought hard battles in the Eighties, especially after the unsolved murder on campus of a female contemporary, she’s dismissive of the luxury fourth-wave feminism of her students, embodied by earnest, mixed-heritage but highly privileged Nikki (Phoebe Ca.
.jpg?width=1200&auto=webp)
