A neon image of Ruth Lady Justice, clad in electric blue robes and a hot pink mask, greets the audience at the Golden Theater as if it were a lawyer’s strip joint.
In a way, at least “at first glanceOpened on Sunday” is being performed. Over the course of her 100-minute play by one woman, we see a barrister remove all psychological armor from a woman who cross-examines her in a sexual assault case, and the same armor stripped away. From her when she became a victim.
This play by Susie Miller won all sorts of awards in Australia and the UK. It’s easy to see why. Its star, Jodie Comer, gives a performance of tremendous skill and incredible stamina in the second half of “Killing Eve,” especially considering it’s her first stage appearance.Justin Directed by Martin, the piece is chic and approachable, with a now-must-have design that underscores the idea that this is a big event. And the reform of sexual assault jurisprudence the play advocates has never been more compelling or worthy of attention.
But underlining and advocacy do something strange to drama: they obliterate it.
Not at first. Meet Tessa Ensler, she’s a complex theatrical character, “thoroughbred”, “ready to race” and “every muscle pumped”. , in Cummer’s interpretation, is funny, sexy, self-constricting, gasping in bars and flirting with buddies. She’s not under the arrogance of her pedigree: “best law school, best city, best grades, best people.” When she gets drunk and rants that her “innocent until proven guilty” is the foundation of civilization, it turns out she’s also using it as a free pass for her own risky behavior. increase. At one point she throws garbage at the audience.
She may be a thoroughbred, but soon we meet Tessa in another incarnation. She is a refugee from the working class and she cannot comfortably return. Visiting her chilly mother in Liverpool, she becomes a little girl who craves her tenderness and doesn’t get much. (Her brother is violent.) The pompous accent she uses in court seems to erode before our ears, giving her (and Comer’s) native Scouse dialect a distinctive early Beatles accent. cries out. (“Says” is pronounced “saze,” not “sez.”) She rushes back to London before she gets hurt.
It’s not Tessa’s MO that’s dashing, it’s the production’s MO. Martin’s busy staging, with its expressionistic sound (many throbbing throbs by Ben and Max Lingham) and sudden, intense slashes of light (by Natasha Chibbers), left Comer alone in a vast space. I’m having a hard time helping fill it in. She doesn’t need it. She solves one actor’s problems with her own wit and plays handily all aspects of conversations that sometimes involve multiple people. And if she’s a third-person reporter of a memorized event and should be a first-person participant, she uses Echo to identify the content, thus making Echo meaningful. The laughter she makes after saying “I’ll laugh” is of a very specific and complex kind.
Yet Martin is constantly running around, moving tables, jumping on those tables to make court declarations, yelling music, fiddling with clothes, and juggling props. Some of this stage business helps provide character insights that might otherwise be lost without other actors. I try to hide my Victoria’s Secret shopping bag when I’m asked.
In any case, the bustle stops on the way. Now we meet the third Tessa. This is a rape victim and she knows she will have a hard time proving satisfaction of the law. She had previously consented to have sex with men. She couldn’t yell no because her mouth was so blocked that she could hardly breathe.
She is now entering the legal system as a plaintiff rather than an attorney. That Comer’s portrayal of her defenselessness is devastating, her voice hoarse. Even Miriam Buzzer’s set — a towering case files shelf — abandons her and dives into the fly.
But this is also where the play abandons itself. Of course, that’s not the argument. Tessa suffers the same kind of cross-examination that has been visited on other women under the guise of impartially “examining the case”, so in such a situation finding the truth, let alone justice. More than that, the system for adjudicating consent is diabolical, an artificial trap to prevent women from proving anything, and the fact that Above is the second rape.
I wish the play only made us feel this. But despite being warned by her judge to stop, when Tessa speaks in court, her former criminal defense attorney, playwright Miller, likewise breaks free of her dramatic frame. to free her. Lights are on in the seats. A straight-forward text becomes a speech, a summary. For reasons more wishful and political than her signature, Tessa regains her own voice.
One-man, multi-person stories often fail to create suspense and momentum, but Miller frames this story precisely. Details learned casually in the first half come back menacingly in the second half. The abandonment of that structure in his final third of the play is equally accurate, and many would appreciate the destruction at first glance.
But for me, the change undid previous works of emotional engagement in favor of outright persuasion on subjects most of the audience were likely to disagree with. When my idea was repeated, I started to get beaten up, as if I had been beaten by a politician.
Of course, enlightening and enraging audiences in hopes of changing the world is not against dramatic policy.What is Tessa’s last name? Eve Ensler, now known as V, It should have been a clue to Miller’s intentions. V’s 1996 play The Vagina Monologues broke with the dramatic form (which, after all, was formalized and popularized by men) to make a difference that goes well beyond that. I also thought of Larry Kramer. His play was a plea. Given works like theirs and idiosyncratic performances like Comer, I wouldn’t argue the compromises of “Prima Facey.” Especially if it wins in the long run.
at first glance
Until June 18th at the Golden Theater in Manhattan. primafacieplay.comRunning time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
