Prima Facie

Sexual assault and the law ... Rape (alleged) by a member of chambers ... Suzie Miller's play brought to the screen ... Jodie Comer is chilling - and thrilling ... Scorching indictment of the law .... Miss Lumière at the National Theatre (Live)  

Playright Suzie Miller with actress Jodie Comer 

Devastating.

One word just about sums up the experience of watching Suzie Miller's monologue about the law and sexual assault play out on the Harold Pinter stage of the National Theatre (Live).

In fact, spending ninety minutes with her protagonist - successful young criminal defence barrister (and rape victim) Tessa Ensler - is an assault in itself, on the law of consent. 

In her first stage role, Killing Eve's Jodie Comer gives a thrilling performance - inhabiting every crack in her character's psyche, while simultaneously exploiting every defence mechanism offered by her knowledge of the law.

It's a hell of a ride, and a dangerous one.

Australian playwright Miller has wrought a powerful indictment of the law's failure to deliver justice for victims of sexual assault, and she spells it out in visceral detail.

Drawn from her experience as a criminal barrister, Prima Facie does what all good theatre should do - it shifts the audience's perceptions and engages our common humanity. 

Written in a sometimes overly-detailed and polemical style, Comer nevertheless gets to the heart of the devastation which results not only from the act of violation, but from the inadequacy of a patriarchal legal system in dealing with the crime.

For the first half of the monologue, Tessa is in overdrive, overly directed by Justin Martin, who has her leaping about on barrister's tables, re-enacting the cut and thrust of courtroom battles past, or as she puts it, "the game of law".

It's superfluous, and irritating, since Comer clearly has the theatrical chops for both depth and projection.

Her Tessa presents as the brilliant, driven, working class girl made good, certain in her manipulation of the law, until it turns on her.

And what a turn. 

As Tessa recounts the lead up to her rape (by a privileged male barrister in the same chambers) and the rape itself, Miss Lumiere was riveted by fear and dread.

It is as if every woman is on stage with Tessa, crawling naked in the aftermath.

We all know how this ends - Tessa is emotionally broken, the perpetrator triumphs - but Miller also makes a hefty intellectual meal of getting there, never once letting the legal system off the hook.

When Tessa finally has her day in court (exactly 782 days later, she tells us) it is before an all-male courtroom, four female jurors aside.

Now we get to witness her dismemberment by the generations of men who have shaped the law. 

Comer is astonishing in this part of the monologue, flashing between self-doubt, intellectual rationalisation, emotional confusion, ironclad conviction and sheer terror.

It is clear, that while she is the one who has been raped, she is the one on trial.

Tessa's account of her cross-examination by her (alleged) rapist's silk - "the best QC money can buy" - sends chills up even the spines of the hundreds of case files which so oppressively frame the set.

In the end, Tessa finds her untrammelled voice on voir dire, detailing to the court the "corrosive" nature of sexual assault and the precise ways in which the legal system inhibits and destroys those who bring prosecutions.

While much of Miller's writing errs on the side of didacticism rather than drama, it is ultimately redeemed by Comer's blazing performance.

As Tessa, she goes deep inside the loss of self, to find herself. It's a stunning, shattering end piece, full of sound and fury and ... hope.

Now that's what Miss Lumière calls a great night at the theatre - even if it is on film.

*Prima Facie is screening in very limited release.