Jodie Comer is a tour de force in Prima Facie at the Harold Pinter Theatre

Prima Facie

Harold Pinter Theatre, London

Two plays, separated by four centuries, worlds apart in gravity, tone and style, and yet with one huge common factor: they’re both about women wronged by men. In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, written around 1598, it’s Hero, publicly shamed and jilted by the callow Claudio; in Suzie Miller’s monologue Prima Facie, first seen in Australia in 2019, it’s Tessa, raped on a date and then humiliated by both the man and the law. That there’s even a shadow of overlap between them tells its own shocking story.

Jodie Comer — known to many from Killing Eve — makes a phenomenal West End debut in Prima Facie. Playing Tessa, a super-smart Liverpudlian criminal defence barrister from a working-class background, she blazes on to the stage, gleaming with intelligence and confidence. She darts about her starchy, old-fashioned office (design by Miriam Buether), even leaping on to the table at one point, as she gleefully recounts her formidable training and her triumphs in the courtroom.

Tessa specialises in defending men accused of sexual assault and in using the precision of the law to blow aside the nuances and inconsistencies of a case. “There is no real truth, only legal truth,” she declares, proud of her ability to pick her way around the system, to work hard and play hard. Comer is spry, sleek and smart, winning the audience over with her effervescent presence in Justin Martin’s staging.

And then. Tessa is raped on a date by a fellow barrister and that exuberant, mercurial person disappears. She seems to fade and shrink as she cowers on the floor of the bathroom. Distraught, she makes fundamental mistakes — showering although she knows it will destroy vital evidence.

Suddenly Tessa is on the other side of the law, enduring the questions, the physical examination, the endless waiting. She experiences the trauma of having her body, her intimate past and her personal behaviour scrutinised. Her belief in the system to which she has dedicated her life crumbles, her anger eventually turning to determination: “The law has been shaped by generations and generations of men,” she says.

The play, at this point, takes a bit of a switch into polemic, which is a shame. The issue is extremely important: in the UK, in the year leading up to September 2021, only 1.3 per cent of rapes reported by police resulted in a suspect being charged or receiving a summons, according to the Office for National Statistics. The stage is an excellent place to address this. But it’s stated rather bluntly here, the drama getting left behind. Comer holds the line, however: her performance throughout is a tour de force.

★★★★☆

To June 18, primafacieplay.com; in cinemas July 21, ntlive.com

Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare’s Globe, London

It’s a year of Much Ado on the British stage. We’ve already had Roy Alexander Weise’s Afrofuturist-inspired RSC production and in July comes Simon Godwin’s National Theatre version, starring Katherine Parkinson and John Heffernan. Between them slips Lucy Bailey’s immensely attractive staging for Shakespeare’s Globe: a show that relishes the playful potential of this vibrant outdoor space while not losing sight of the darker side of the story.

Bailey takes the Italian setting of Shakespeare’s play about two sets of lovers and switches it not in place, but in time. Here we are in Italy in 1945 in the dying days of a brutal war, Nazi occupation and a fascist dictatorship. There’s a sense of joy and release as the hilltop house is reopened and preparations are made for the returning partisans. Notably it’s all women we see first (Leonato, governor of Messina, becomes matriarch Leonata here, played by Katy Stephens), as they slice oranges, unwind paper chains and shake out pretty dresses. Joanna Parker’s garden set fills the Globe space with shrubbery, flowers and winding vines.

That sunny disposition continues as the men arrive, pushing through the standing audience, singing “Bella ciao”. The mood is warm and flirtatious, the comedy light and breezy, laced with accordion music from Orlando Gough. The “merry war” between Beatrice and Benedick, who disguise their mutual attraction behind fierce scorn, is genuinely funny: Ralph Davis and Lucy Phelps are both excellent and create a fizzing chemistry. So too are the comic scenes in which their friends trick them into declaring their love.

The cast makes great use of the garden setting, with Davis’s Benedick having to evade snapping shears as he hides and Phelps’s Beatrice creating some wonderful comic business with a sprinkler and a volleyball net. Even the pompous policeman Dogberry, often overcooked, is enjoyably droll in George Fouracres’ performance, tottering about the stage precariously on a bicycle.

But there is a dark shadow lurking, physicalised in the shape of Don John (Olivier Huband). The malcontent brother of Don Pedro wears a sharp suit and whatever drives his personal rancour, here it seems to symbolise something bigger. The ease with which he dupes the besotted Claudio speaks of the misogyny running through a patriarchal society, of a time of uncertainty and distrust, and of the close bonds that have developed between the men in combat. Claudio’s harsh rejection of his fiancée, with Nadi Kemp-Sayfi’s gentle Hero swaying with shock beneath the wedding arch of roses, draws gasps from the audience. The setting evokes other garden nightmares too — notably Eden.

I’ve never seen a production of this play that quite made sense of the ending and Claudio’s rapid rehabilitation, and this one is no exception. But this is still a joyous, clever staging that deftly balances sweet and sour.

★★★★☆

To October 23, shakespearesglobe.com