The National Theatre Live production of Suzie Miller’s powerful one-woman play has returned to Australian cinemas for a limited season.
Multi-award-winning British actor Jodie Comer delivers a riveting, consummate performance as young, hard-working, highly successful barrister Tessa.
We first meet Tessa during a lunch-break, confidently riding on her success as a barrister and re-enacting her courtroom cat and mouse defence cross-examination strategies. It’s ‘The Game of Law’. Triumphant. Theatrical. They haven’t lost a case in months.
Comer’s powerhouse performance takes us to the University of Cambridge, where Tessa rises from her working-class background to excel. The advice she is given to ‘Prepare for the fight of your life’ becomes a prophecy. Tessa muses, ‘This is not life – this is law.’
She appreciates her male colleague, Julian, for seeing her as an equal. Life is good. Tessa reflects on her cross-examination strategy in a sexual assault case – always aware that someone’s freedom is at stake.
A turn of events sees Tessa’s life unravel. She now experiences the patriarchal power of the law, and becomes the focus of another barrister’s cross-examination strategies. Harrowing, demoralising. Unfair and tragic.
Director Justin Martin uses subtle wardrobe changes, atmospheric lighting and clever projected visual effects to enhance Jodie Comer’s brilliant storytelling in this 2022 sold-out run at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End.
Australian playwright and screenwriter Suzie Miller is also a human rights lawyer. Last year, she published Prima Facie as a novel, and is now working on adapting it into a film.
Miller’s exquisitely astute writing about the human condition merges with her hands-on knowledge of the law, an obvious compassion for the underdog and seeking justice for women.
This National Theatre compelling live production of Prima Facie is not to be missed
Distributed by Sharmill Films, Prima Facie is screening at Cinema Nova, Sun Theatre Yarraville, Peninsula Cinemas Rosebud, Lido Hawthorn, Classic Elsternwick, Cameo Belgrave, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Como, Palace Balwyn.

• Review by Cheryl Threadgold