NOTE: This article discusses sexual violence
The famous Jodie Comer came to Dublin two weeks ago for a five-day-only run in the Gaiety Theatre of Suzie Miller’s multi award winning play Prima Facie. You may know Jodie Comer from the hit show Killing Eve with Sandra Oh or her role in the 2021 movie Free Guy where she starred alongside Ryan Reynolds.
Prima Facie follows the life of Tessa, a hardworking young barrister. She’s pulling herself out of her middle class background through the world of law, becoming incredibly successful to the point where she hardly ever loses a case. Tessa believes wholeheartedly in the law and its fairness, even as she defends men in cases of sexual assault. She believes that if a guilty man gets off with no punishment, it’s not her fault, merely a failure of the police and the jury. She’s just doing her job. Removing herself emotionally from these women pressing charges, Tessa finds loopholes in their claims, cross examining them until they seem unreliable.
Prima Facie is a one woman show, similar in its execution to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag live, where Tessa speaks to the audience in an external inner-monologue style. As she’s telling us about her cases, she files away each sexual assault report that she’s won in the light up file cabinet behind her on stage. She never doubts that she’s doing the right thing. Even when approached by a female prosecuting attorney who tells her that she’s not in it for the money, she’s just trying to help these women, Tessa writes her off, thinking that she’s doing the same thing to uphold her side of the law.
Then the unthinkable happens. Tessa goes on a date with a fellow barrister, a coworker that she’s known for five years. And he rapes her. In a sickening description, Jodie Comer acted phenomenally portraying the disorienting confusion as she goes to the police the morning after. The set in the Gaiety Theatre helped attenuate this confusion as water poured onto the stage while Tessa ran through the rain, trying to decide what to do. She knows that pressing charges will get her nowhere. She’s seen this a million times. Yet, her mother encourages her to do it anyway, telling her not to let them get her down, even if nothing comes of her accusation. She files a report and waits years before making it to court. To portray the passage of time, numbers illuminate the stage, counting the number of days since the rape.
In court, Tessa finds herself on the witness stand, a place she’s looked at countless times but never sat in. She’s now on the other end of everything she’s ever experienced in the court room, feeling anxious and small. She looks around the room for other women, only seeing her mother and a female police officer. In the stands are her rapist’s friends from private school, coming to cheer their buddy on in his assumed assured win.
It starts off well, as Tessa makes her statement. Then the cross examination comes. The part that Tessa used to be so good at is what makes her meet her demise in court this time. The defense barrister finds loopholes in her story, and frames the case to look like she made it up in order to get a better position at work over her male coworker. She loses the case.
The play ends with Tessa’s monologue critiquing the patriarchal system of law, built to protect men and destroy women. She realises that it was never the fault of the police or the jury, it always came down to the cross examination. As she speaks, all the cases that she had filed away at the start of the play begin to light up. There are maybe 100, each representing the women that the system failed. Women who never got their justice, and men who walked away free when they should not have been.
Prima Facie is a heartbreaking play, bringing the audience to tears multiple times throughout the performance. It’s incredibly well written, drawing in the viewer in a way that interestingly allows the audience to stay on Tessa’s side the entire time, from when she is doing the wrongdoings, to when she is wronged. You go through the entire experience with her, becoming more and more aware of the injustice of the legal system as it goes on.
Jodie Comer has won Olivier and Tony Awards for her role as Tessa, and her performance at the Gaiety did not disappoint. Her expressions and emotions are captivating, and although she is the only actor on the stage, she tells the story in a way that captures the full picture. The set was incredible with its full circle imagery of the case files and the physical elements such as the rain.
Overall, Prima Facie at the Gaiety Theatre was an incredible experience. It’s a must watch play that highlights the need for reform in the justice system. Everything was extremely well executed and I left with no notes on the production, only a heavy heart at the content of the show.
