At tonight’s grand finale of Prima Facie at Cardiff’s New Theatre, people crowd into the auditorium, seemingly hunched under the weight of great expectation. After all, this one-woman show features none other than breakout star Jodie Comer, in the role of hotshot lawyer Tessa Ensler. Having gained a solid reputation playing Villanelle in the hit TV series Killing Eve, as well as starring in Hollywood roles including the recent 28 Years Later, it’s no surprise theatregoers are enthusiastic.
As if to underline the event’s importance, even the usher is marking her authority, declaring anyone caught leaving during the performance, for any reason, barred from re-entry. Still,with a run-time of one hour and 40 minutes without intermission, tonight’s performance is terse, intense and at times thrilling, albeit in an understated way.
Written by Suzie Miller and directed by Justin Martin, Prima Facie’s energy is largely predicated on Comer’s performance rather than on any pyrotechnics or onstage wizardry. Out of the gate, her one-woman monologue charges, with little letup, from start to finish, forcing the audience to keep up lest they miss anything. Comer’s myriad accents and impersonations, as Ensler relays the excitement of starting out her career as a defence lawyer from her early days of law school, to rehearsing her courtroom finesse and rizzing the jury, are all-absorbing and exacting.
Yet, for those who need some respite from lawyer-speak and courtroom drama, the audience is also given a doorway into Ensler’s personal life – from her working class roots and relations with her family, to the romantic relationship that develops with her colleague Julian. Here, the play takes a more dramatic turn, its subject matter quickly souring.
Exploring themes of rape and a judicial system that fails to adequately prosecute sexual assault against women, Ensler’s personal experience causes her to move from seeing such crimes through an objective, detached legal lens to understanding just how the current system cannot reasonably account for the inconsistencies in evidence caused by sexual trauma, despite her previous indifference and certainty.
At the show’s conclusion, the point is finely made, with the audience standing in rapturous applause – and confirming Comer’s Olivier Award credentials for her part. Underlining, too, that the law’s insufficient administration tends to treat victims as legal pawns in a machine rather than flesh-and-blood human beings worthy of justice and dignity.
Prima Facie, New Theatre, Cardiff, Sat 14 Feb
words OLIVER R. MOORE-HOWELLS
