Prima Facie
Golden Theater, New York City ★★★★
In her Tony-nominated Broadway debut, “Jodie Comer doesn’t just take the stage, she consumes it,” said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. Reprising a role that won her an Olivier Award last month, the Killing Eve star is “everything you could ask for from an actor” in Prima Facie, a one-woman show about a brash London barrister crushed by the legal system when she needs it most. Comer’s Tessa Ensler has made a career of defending men accused of sexual violence and revels in her skills and her triumphant rise from humble roots. But when Tessa herself is raped, “all of the codes she’s lived by come back to haunt her.” The Tessa we’re watching transforms from “savvy high-flyer” to “bereft sufferer,” and Comer portrays Tessa’s colleagues, relatives, and the investigating officers as well.
Don’t count on enjoying Prima Facie, said Trish Deitch in Variety. “It’s not fun or entertaining or inspiringly good in the way theater can be.” Suzie Miller’s writing is instead “good in the way that eating your vegetables is good.” When the play explains how the law works when an allegation of sexual assault arises, it’s enlightening but also “dull and somewhat artless.” Comer also pushes too hard during the antic first half, “playing for laughs to an audience who already loves her.” But the tone changes completely in the aftermath of Tessa’s rape, at which point “Comer embodies every woman who has ever felt alone in the world,” and we suffer with her. Whatever the production’s flaws, “I have to recommend it,” because as a serious, potent drama starring an actress who is drawing big crowds, it “will do its part in chipping away at the injustice that is women remaining voiceless and powerless after they’ve been sexually assaulted. For that, Prima Facie deserves high praise—even adulation.”