Setting the bar on sexual consent

Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie is a disturbing courtroom drama about the rape of a woman, and the legal issue of consent.

Sheridan Harbridge in Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie for Griffin Theatre Company. Picture: Brett Boardman.

This urgent play is about a highly successful barrister, Tessa, who defends sex offenders. Her skills in cross-examining the victims often get her clients off. But then she goes on a court journey of her own from the other side of the bar table.

Suzie Miller’s play, one of her best yet, is not only a story, although it is definitely that. It’s about law and justice, and the way the procedures of the former often preclude the latter. In the adversarial court system it is the victim, almost always a woman, who is put on trial, not the perpetrator, almost always a man. Journalists are not even allowed to use these terms until the trial is concluded.

It is also about the legal, as opposed to the ethical or interpersonal, issue of consent. Miller argues that the law has not yet taken that on board, allowing barristers for the defence to cross-examine the victim about her sexual history and how much she had to drink that night.

It is in some ways an argumentative play, especially in the second half, but it is very real and moving. It is a monodrama, brilliantly and powerfully performed by Sheridan Harbridge.

She establishes Tessa’s savvy flash skill in the courtroom, impersonating many characters but always Tessa underneath. She plays with tenderness the young person who wants a bit of fun outside all the competitive world she has joined, coming from the wrong side of the tracks.

Then she is very moving as she plays Tess discovering her real strength.

Lee Lewis’s production is bold and clear, allowing Miller and Harbridge’s character to find her space.

There is, in Renee Mulder’s imposing set design, a chair on a platform that appears to be a place of authority but soon becomes a place for the victim when she reluctantly but then defiantly takes the witness stand.

Trent Suidgeest lights the set effectively, and there is a great subtle composition and sound design by Paul Charlier. In the final scenes it keeps brooding gently over the action.

This is a confronting and disturbing play about the rape of a woman who went home with a friend she quite liked but who didn’t want it to go that far. As has been said many times to young men, consent is setting the bar way too low. Wait, ask them, hold out for enthusiasm.

Prima Facie by Suzie Miller. Griffin Theatre Company, Stables Theatre, Sydney, May 23. Tickets: $31-$62. Bookings: online. Duration: 100min, no interval. Until June 22. Then Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, July 3 to 6.