Handing in one of the acting highlights of this or any other Broadway season is Jodie Comer in Suzie Miller’s explosive solo play Prima Facie, at the Golden Theater after an Olivier-winning run in London. Comer runs the proverbial gamut of emotions from A to way beyond Z as Tessa, a high-powered British barrister who mostly represents criminal defendants accused of sexual assault. The tables are turned when Tessa herself is the victim of an attack by a fellow lawyer and she must undergo the degrading process of seeking justice in a male-dominated court system.
The title is Latin for first impressions and ours of Tessa is one of confidence bordering on arrogance as she details the steps of cross-examining an uncertain witness and reveling in her judicial prowess. Comer is remarkably subtle in her depiction of Tessa’s no-nonsense demeanor. There’s nothing mean or nasty about her; she’s just briskly self-assured about her place in the legal universe and that it’s the right one. But after casual sex with a colleague turns ugly, Tessa’s solid professional veneer is stripped away and set designer Miriam Buether’s comforting solid walls of law books vanish, replaced by an empty, rain-soaked void, lit by Natasha Chivers like a nightmare. Comer heart-stoppingly conveys Tessa’s parallel unravelling, peeling back her tough exterior to reveal the vulnerable, violated victim.
Miller blunts her powerful point by giving Tessa a climactic, Hollywood-ish courtroom speech where she takes apart the inequities in the standard legal procedures and makes a tearful emotional plea on behalf of sexual battery survivors. No judge would allow such pontification, however justified. Apart from this departure from harsh reality, Prima is prime drama, shattering and heartfelt in the extreme.
