University students can sometimes be unhinged firebrands – and this play, opening in the week when a University of Oxford student was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred, couldn’t have been timelier if it tried. Yale University’s Calhoun College, named for John C Calhoun (1782-1850), changed its name in 2017 to Grace Hopper College, named for Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992). The former was, at one point, vice-president of the United States, but whatever his political achievements, his strong defence of the slave trade meant students (as well as faculty) at the college had, for some decades, expressed displeasure in various ways. Hopper, meanwhile, was a mathematician, computer scientist and a rear admiral in the US Navy.
This coming-of-age story is about a whole lot more than the removal of a statue and a name change – and the extensive journey to achieve a long-held desire. A comprehensive overview of American college life (well, sort of – there’s nothing about college sports here), it’s a simultaneously focused and broad-based play. The dramatic tension is palpable as impressionable and energetic youngsters do what they do in the relative privacy of their dorms, and some students have more spacious dorms than others. One student not telling another student about something is a recurring theme, such that there is rarely, if ever, outright lying going on, but withholding of information. Then again, what isn’t said but is discovered anyway was usually something difficult to talk about – these were not matters that could be casually tossed into a group conversation.
Occasionally, the play gets bogged down in the minutiae of who said what to whom, and whenever it does, it reveals that the plotlines are not entirely watertight. For instance, when Annabelle (Céline Buckens) takes umbrage with Stacy (Bola Akeju) because the latter has stood for election for the presidency of a sorority, why is it that Annabelle only discovers Stacy was even in the running, against her, after the result was announced? Did she not see the ballot paper? There must have been some ‘vote for me’ poster somewhere, or something on social media.
Anyway, there was some rather beautiful singing to enjoy, partly thanks to upcoming auditions for the college’s a cappella society, and the multi-layered narrative finds its feet very quickly. Say the wrong thing in this kind of environment and fellow students are relentlessly unforgiving, the threat of being ‘cancelled’ ever looming. Though to its credit, Jamie Bogyo’s script doesn’t mention the word. The power dynamics were interesting to observe: even for headstrong Omar (Ivan Oyik), money talks.
Completing the on-stage cast are roommates Isaiah (Ernest Kingsley Jr) and Connor (also Bogyo), who get on reasonably well despite differences of opinion – until, well, they don’t. Competition and ruthlessness make for gripping theatre in this intriguing snapshot of student life, covering some pertinent contemporary issues with nuance and insight.
Review by Chris Omaweng
What’s in a name?
The winds of change are blowing through the elite ivy-league halls of one of America’s most prestigious universities. For students Isaiah, Connor, Annabelle, Omar and Stacy, on the precipice of starting their adult lives, life is no longer about getting through a political science lecture with a hangover and auditioning for the school acapella group. Confronting the injustices of the past is top of the agenda – starting with the fact that the college is named after a notorious defender of slavery.
And in this pressure cooker environment, everyone has to pick a side.
Beneath the passionate speeches, do old prejudices die hard? What happens to friendship and love amidst frank debate?
Stacy – Bola Akeju
Connor – Jamie Bogyo
Annabelle – Céline Buckens
Isaiah – Ernest Kingsley Jr
Omar – Ivan Oyik
Writer – Jamie Bogyo
Director – Roy Alexander Weise MBE
Designer – Khadija Raza
Lighting Designer – Laura Howard
Composer and Sound Designer – Giles Thomas
Musical Director and Additional Arrangements – Michael Henry
Movement Director – Mateus Daniel
Fight and Intimacy Director – Haruka Kuroda
Casting Director – Isabella Odoffin CDG
SAFE SPACE
Minerva Theatre at Chichester Festival Theatre
11 October to 8 November 2025
