Worth: $17.00
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Cast:
Jodie Comer
Intro:
… a campaign piece in a way, but one which is so artful that it stands the full test as a piece of drama in its own right.
What a piece of theatre this is. It grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go for its hour plus running time. It is a one-woman monologue, which paints a picture of the current state of the law around sexual assault, in a way which few authors could match.
Australian/British playwright Suzie Miller was a lawyer herself before turning to writing and she knows what she is talking about. The piece was performed on the stage in Australia but has recently transferred to the London stage where it makes a return, as it were, to our screens as part of the always-interesting National Theatre Live.
This production stars Liverpudlian actress Jodie Comer (Killing Eve, The Last Duel) as Tessa. Tessa is a confident young barrister on the rise. She mixes it with the male-dominated profession and is proud of her track record of winning cases and the fact that she can game with the best of them. As her character tells us, barristers ‘win’ in a way even if they come second, in so far as they have been part of the great (and lucrative) ‘game’ of pleading in court. Win some/lose some, but always do a good job and keep charging those astronomical fees.
However, she mixes business with pleasure when she has an ill-advised fling with her friend and co-worker Julian. What happens next is what we might think of as the inciting incident. Except that this scriptwriter term is too bland for the visceral experience that Miller and Comer confront us with. When Tessa is in the court case over the central allegation, she is unwittingly in a position to know the experience from both the outside and the inside. In that sense, she is perhaps like a doctor who knows the progress of a disease that they have contracted.
However, this irony (if that is what it is), is not the only issue. The pain and rage that Tessa feels at the way the justice system recasts her situation, fuels the drama. This shift from the establishment of the actual truth to relaying the legally-provable truth is the rift at the heart of this piece.
Given the sickeningly high incidence of sexual assault, and the possibility that perpetrators might well be acquitted on the strength of how they are represented rather than the facts of the matter, there is surely cause for reform. Miller has written a campaign piece in a way, but one which is so artful that it stands the full test as a piece of drama in its own right. Sadly, this is a timely piece. Even more sadly, it is almost timeless in its continuing relevance.
