Suzie Miller’s second play about women in the legal system ran at the Wyndham’s earlier this year, and now makes its way to the screen as part of National Theatre’s At Home story.
Prima Facie, with Josie Comer, was devastating. This time, in ‘my court, my rules’ (shades of Judge Judy?), Rosamund Pike takes centre stage as a judge. It’s another story about how professional ethics and truths reach into the personal.
Jessica Parks is successful and known for tough decisions, as well as empathy for female complainants. When she is in her chambers or at home, it is her teenage son Harry who is her world. We see flashes of who he was as a child – fascinated by animals, bullied at school.
A party with other 18 year olds changes everything. What makes Miller’s play more effective is that it doesn’t preach or cast its characters as black or white. They are simply real people who head down paths you might not expect.
Director Justin Martin allows the focus of the court to fracture from the start, with sound and light glitches. Later, home is grounded, a karaoke night is all shadows and Shania, and characters beyond Jessica, her husband Michael, and Harry, are sketched in absentia.
Consent, parenting, the manosphere, pornography, and the failings of the legal system all thread through Inter Alia, with a skillful blend of humour and devastating drama.
Pike is especially good as the wonan who is pulled in several directions. The sharp legal mind who know how juries can be manipulated. The woman who knows her place is to protect other women and girls. The mama bear protecting her cub.
Jamie Glover’s Michael is just a regular dad, also in the legal profession, bonding with his son over football but never having a serious conversation. And Cormac McAlinden, new to the role of Harry when the play transferred to the West End, is small, scared, but also surprisingly strong.
There are no easy answers or quick fixes in Inter Alia. Morality, self-preservation – after all, who is saving who in this story – and versions of the truth are all explored against the background of technology and peer pressure. It isn’t that there is any twist in the plot of Inter Alia, it is just, as in Prima Facie, that the world as we know it comes crashing in on one family.
Miller is proving to be one of the foremost female playwrights working today. Her plays are forthwright and political without raising the message to a strident shout.
I was deeply disappointed not to be able to review this important play when it was staged – happily, the streamed version goes some way to giving at least a flavour of how Inter Alia came across live.
4 stars.
Inter Alia is available on National Theatre at Home now.