Jodie Comer in Prima Facie: the closest to justice silenced rape victims will ever get
Killing Eve star Jodie Comer’s West End debut in ‘Prima Facie’ rips open the wound of injustice and makes box office history.
This review offers a real-life account of what it’s like to watch the “generation-defining masterpiece” through the eyes of a survivor.
According to the frenzied box office staff, Prima Facie had London’s Harold Pinter theatre, “absolutely packed to the rafters- every single day.”
Award winning Liverpudlian actress, Jodie Comer, plays Tessa, a formidable and sexy young Barrister with wit as sharp as a knife. She offers a mesmeric and full-power performance, which Killing Eve fans will go wild for.
The impact which Comer’s genre-defining performance makes is more than top class entertainment, the play carries huge social significance too.
It is a raw showcase and a rare cross-over between activism and drama. It is truly ‘campaign theatre’ at its absolute finest.
Not for the fainthearted or the meek, Prima Facie’s forceful power-house-style hits you right from the offset. Its theme a gritty insight into the broken judicial system that fails a staggering 1 in 3 victims of sexual abuse.
Comer’s character ‘Tessa’ self describes herself as, “a shit-hot, haven’t lost a case in four fucking months” defence lawyer who often represents men accused of rape.
However, when life offers Tessa the chance to experience the other side of the coin, it strips her bare. Tessa’s self-assured, top-of-her-game attitude disintegrates as the legal and actual truth do battle.
In a scene so authentically acted by Comer, Tessa is raped by her suave counsel colleague: a scene so real it made my teeth clench, my brow furrow, and my eyes wince.
What started as a sexy consensual tussle, became a terrifyingly real violation, a living nightmare. Confused and numb, Tessa believed truth and justice would right the wrong.
However, just like the plays creator, Suzie Miller, a former Human Rights lawyer who left the law in 2010, Tessa found the patriarchal system of law and justice had a very weak relation to the truth.
It was this reality which encouraged Miller to sidestep law:
“ I felt that I had more impact with my plays than my daily court battles”.
Having experienced just how broken the legal system is first hand, this really struck a chord.
Just like the play’s bold Director, Justin Martin, I too felt compelled to leave a career in education in favour of something more impactful.
I realised that giving victims’ a voice through writing and advocacy was a calling I couldn’t quieten.
The sad truth about Prima Facie is that although, for some, it may sound like trauma-revisited, for others it may be closest to feeling justice they ever get.
And with the shambolic attempts by police to dissuade rape victims with statistics;
“only about 1% even get accepted by the CPS you know, it’s not worth it pursuing really love”
It is hardly suprising…
The inner torment for (mostly) women who come forward is monumental. Often they bravely endure decades of their digital history being reviwed by (mostly) male detectives, a torturous and re traumatising experience in itself.
Imagine an office environment where male detectve look through every whatsapp, every photo, every text message, every email, every…thing.
This painful reality is one that often concludes with detectives, “knowing the victim better than she even knows herself!”.
The intense shame, vulnerability and humliation this brings, not to mention the fear. And for what? To spare the woman next in line? Yes…
Just as was the case for Prima Facie’s energetic protaganist Tessa, for over a year I felt the pressure to ‘do it for the other women’. The other women who regardless of my efforts, became my perpetrators next victim.
It was a heavy burden indeed and one I wanted to shake off at many points, presumably just like the 33% of women who end up dropping their sexual assault cases within three months of reporting.
The play’s intense narrative, offered a raw, uneditied view into the kaleidoscopic injustice rape victims experience, and was that unfortunately I could directly relate to.
Like so many others just like Tessa, after almost a year of evidence gathering, I too was failed,
“The CPS haven’t accepted it for trial” “I’m so sorry…I realy am. I know he did it, I believe you, I am so sorry”.
Delivering the news with a tear in his eye, the detective inspector unwittingly made a mere statistic of me.
Nestled by a majority of hundreds of thousands, I became a insignificant slice of the 98.7%. I was just another victim of rape whose case wouldn’t even be heard.
Perhaps in a vague attempt to grasp a silver lining, Prima Facie forced me to review my own experience, and search for something positive – which I’m pleased to say I found.
When I first contacted the police in 2016, I described my sexual assault as, “non-consensual sex” because I naively believed rape couldn’t occur in a relationship. I was never corrected on my outdated language, and never once told that the correct word was rape.
Hardly suprising when, Up until 1991, the legal system had the following views of intermarital rape:
“Rape cannot be considered as merely sexual intercourse without consent”. (Criminal Law Revision Committee)
Elaborating further that non-consensual sex could not be considered rape in the case of,
“a husband and wife cohabiting”, “when sexual intercourse occurred without the wife’s consent.”
Thankfully in 2023, the idea that rape cannot occur inside a relationship is laughable. A silver lining indeed.
Prima Facie shines a floodlight on injustice in a hold-your-breath, right from the moment go kind of way. It is a play that will have you crying, laughing, biting your nails and making fists.
As a survivor, watching this play’s sharply accurate nuances, mind blowing acting, and laser like directing, felt validating. It felt like a tiny teaspoon of Justice had been served, and matter did it not that the courtroom was onstage.
If you work with, know of, care about, or wish to understand silenced victims of sexual assault, you need to watch this play. With 1 in 3 women experiencing sexual assault it is quite simply your social duty.
Prima Facie is a masterful social record of judicial failure and a token-gesture to silenced rape victims everywhere.
Sore that you missed it at the West End? Me too…But, fear not.
Before the show makes it way to Broadway in April 2023, you can watch it in all its glory at NT Live at home by clicking here.
In response to the overwhelming success of Prima Facie, the production team are honouring anyone who feels “connected” to the play with a rare art installation called ‘Prima Faces’.
For a chance to be part of this historical art project, you can contact the Prima Faces team by clicking here.
Sexual assualt data:
In the nine months to September 2021 there were 170,973 sexual offences recorded, which saw a 12% increase on the previous year (In the same period in 2020 there were 152,620).
Of these sexual assaults, 63,136 (37%) were rape (up 13% from previous year). Of all recorded sexual offences, only 1.3% of rapes allegations make it to court.
In the first nine months of 2021 the average time between offence and court hearing is over 2 and half years (1,020 days).
Have you seen Jodie Comer in Prima Facie yet? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
