10 April 2026

Does Inter Alia understand the manosphere?

Suzie Miller’s play takes the debate and turns it on its head – but the message is muddled

What in the world are we going to do about the manosphere?? That’s the question being asked by the British media. Adolescence stabbed at it; James Bloodworth’s
Lost Boys swallowed it; Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere raised an eyebrow at it. Now Inter Alia, Suzie Miller’s latest drama, takes it by the ankles and turns it on its head.

Miller tells the story of Jessica Parke (Rosamund Pike), a “feminist” judge set on revolutionising the legal system’s approach to rape cases. But her conviction begins to unravel when her 18-year-old son Harry (Cormac McAlinden) is accused of rape, and revealed as the archetypal manosphere misogynist: watching grotty porn and ranking women in group chats. Her lawyer husband, Michael (Jamie Glover), unhelpfully prowls around Miriam Buether’s magnificent set, growing more insecure and unsettled as the play unfolds.

Pike delivers a pert, vivacious performance, embodying several characters – and versions of Jessica – as she evolves from an anxious mother into a self-assured judge. It’s a jacked-up, stunning turn across the play’s 100 minutes. Where Pike occasionally falters with accents, she compensates with her razor-sharp comic timing and a vivid portrayal of the pained, conflicted emotions of a feminist advocate who finds herself challenging another woman’s account of sexual assault to save her son. She and McAlinden spark off each other; their final scene together is a goosebump-raising culmination of their strained relationship.

But what will audiences think as they leave the theatre? The play is a somewhat muddled intervention in the manosphere debate. If mothers are led to believe that, despite their best efforts, the manosphere will swallow their sons and regurgitate them as rapists, the result is a bleak, fatalistic vision. In pouring so much energy and specificity into Jessica, Miller reduces Michael and Harry to undercooked sketches of masculinity. The unanswered question of Inter Alia is thus: does it illuminate the manosphere, or concede too much power to it?