Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie is a tough act to follow. The scorching one-woman play about sexual assault stormed the West End in 2022, transferred to Broadway, and saw Jodie Comer deliver a career-defining performance that won her both an Olivier and a Tony Award.
Now, we’re back in the courtroom for its spiritual sibling, Inter Alia, with Rosamund Pike as Jessica, a Crown Court judge juggling the demands of work and family life. The parallels with Miller’s first play are undeniable: Justin Martin returns to direct, and once again, the script exposes how badly the law fails victims. But there are new concerns too: motherhood and all its worries, the manosphere, and the unspoken competitions that can exist within marriage.
Jasper Talbot and Rosamund Pike in Inter Alia at the National Theatre (Photo: Manuel Harlan)
There are echoes, too, of Netflix’s recent hit Adolescence, with both works probing how young boys are meant to navigate an increasingly toxic online world. But unlike Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s measured drama, Miller’s play occasionally veers into polemic. In what is mostly a monologue, Jessica speaks passionately about wanting to achieve better outcomes for female survivors of abuse. She feeds the audience facts: it is “a rare thing” to be convicted of rape, she tells us. In the heat of the legal arena, she’s determined to push back against the system’s many failures.
