Prima Facie

Prima Facie is an epic solo performer experience that is akin to climbing Mount Everest and back again. It is a story in two sections, narrated in amazingly fast paced, first-person present tense by Tessa Ensler, an ambitious barrister in her early 30s who has risen from a Luton council estate via Cambridge to an up-market London practice.

It was a success in the West End and on Broadway, won multiple awards, and has alerted the legal profession to address the issues raised by the story.

Directed by Justin Martin, Jodie Comer’s Tessa Ensler is a ruthlessly competitive young barrister with a sense of humour. A state-educated bright spark, she is a vastly different woman after finding herself on the other side of the witness stand as a rape victim.

It is a simple, but not unusual story, apart from Tessa being a lawyer. A date with an good-looking older work mate, Julian, ends catastrophically when Tessa invites him back to her house. When she decides to go to the police the morning after, she believes that her training has prepared her for everything. However, 782 days later, she learns that being on the witness stand is not how she imagined it.

Tessa is in criminal defence and starting to become noticed, particularly in cases of sexual assault. When asked how she can defend a man who may have raped someone, she naively tells them: “I just play within the rules and do the best I can. If we all play by the rules, then justice will be done.”

Playing Tessa puts immense demands on Comer, playing every character, moving tables around in a dominating central set, a barrister’s chambers, with floor-to-ceiling case files (design by Miriam Buether). The set disappears to blackness as the play progresses, with practical pelting rain on stage. A musical soundscape highlights tense sections (sound design by Ben and Max Ringham) but other compositions (by Rebecca Lucy Taylor) conjure the background sounds of an Ibiza beach bar, while the lighting design (by Natasha Chivers) is full of manic flashes and moody shadows.

Justin Martin’s direction keeps Comer busy. She is in almost constant motion with boundless energy that continues throughout the production. She has a certain swagger, like a female version of the men she works with, jumping up on a table to enact a scene at court before abandoning her wig and suit for a evening dress for a date with a fellow barrister that ends in rape.

Tension develops and the pace slows after the rape, and Tess comes down to earth to confront the legal challenge before her. Instead of speeding through the story—rapidly changing costumes on stage and moving furniture around, she simply stands onstage stripped of any legal trappings physical and emotional, with her bare feet on the ground in the left-over water from thew rainstorm.

Comer is alone as every woman who has ever felt alone in the world, and it’s moving when she sees her mother in the courtroom and feels suddenly supported by someone she previously did not communicate well with. Just as it is moving when she sees the one woman working in the court that day—a female cop—put her hand on her mother’s hand to comfort her. That’s the one still moment of the entire production.

Prima Facie is a Herculean piece for theatre for an experienced actor. Comer, although being an award-winning television actress, has had comparatively little stage experience, so the stamina of getting through 90 minutes of solo performance without the luxury of multiple takes for television must have been draining.

"I've had many moments where I've flirted with the idea of watching it. The first time I texted (producer) James Bierman and I think we'd just finished the London run and we hadn't done Broadway, and I said, 'I think I'm going to watch it'," she recalled.

"Then I thought about it and decided not to. After Broadway, I watched a little bit of it at home, curiosity kind of killed the cat, and I wanted to see it. It was really beautiful, actually.”

Prima Facie is a riveting piece of theatre and a reminder that the legal system is fallible, and is still a work in progress, particularly when victims of rape are often treated often more harshly than their perpetrators!

Barry Hill OAM

Photographer: Helen Murray