Brighton Year-Round 2025
Inter Alia
National Theatre Live, London
Genre: Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Online Theatre, Theatre
Venue: Odeon Studio 7, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round, FringeReview UK
Low Down
Here in Inter Alia, again directed by Justin Martin with others of the Prima Facie team, Rosamund Pike stars in a companion drama that flips that again. After a run at the National’s Lyttelton, it plays now on NT Live at various cinemas till December 11th.
After 15 years away from the stage, Pike returns in a blaze of morals versus the law. Her triumph though is unequivocal.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
Review
In 2022 Suzie Miller, lawyer turned playwright, launched Jodie Comer onto the West End stage with her 2019 solo play Prima Facie. Comer playing a lawyer specialising in male rape defendants has her world inverted when she becomes a rape victim, with the male machinery she’s upheld turned on her. Here in Inter Alia, again directed by Justin Martin with others of the Prima Facie team, Rosamund Pike stars in a companion drama that flips that again. After a run at the National’s Lyttelton, it plays now on NT Live at various cinemas till December 11th.
In one of several contrasts to Prima Facie, Pike’s Jessica Parks leads a cast of three. But the mirror opposite to the earlier work is so precise it makes you flinch; though Miller hints a third play could complete a trilogy. Parks is a judge and KC who makes it her business to ensure victims are supported as much as possible, using empathic delays and time in the court room to soften its legal ferocity; and put male defending lawyers off their appalling stride. Park though has her world upended – betrayed even – by events close to home. It’s a riveting as Prima Facie, and less preachy. There’s more skill in the denouement, though it still slows with legal switchbacks and quibbles; and this time there’s a few loose ends over an incident too easily dismissed.
Pike’s superb at Parks rampant, triumphing in the court room as she lasers through aroused male counsel for the defence, those cocks of the courtroom trying to tear a vulnerable witness apart. Silking out of her Judge’s voice, Pike can shimmy into host mdoe then flip vbkac trough confiding colleagues, querulous husband and vulnerable son. The pace feels like blood drumming. The continual narrative and flip back to various dialogues all carried by Pike, pulses in the adrenalin world going for kills and legal highs as if counsel is a competition for verbal orgasms. No wonder Pike’s recalling her persona’s tone that “cuts through tendons and bone” has an enraging, detumescent effect.
Like Prima Facie this plays straight through its one-hour-forty; but with a relentless pace involving more moving parts this pushes even more to heighten the sense that Pike’s character balances six balls at once. It’s heightened by her continual shrugging in and out of costumes. Parks briefly illuminates “inter alia” (“amongst other things”, a legal sweeping-up operation). She has to juggle her hundred different selves as “in the cracks of everyone else’s lives” just as she pulls out an overcooked pie. The Judge, with her KC past bubbling up outrage in her, homemaker, party-giver, feminist friend, protective mother, sexually active wife. Miriam Buether’s set of a pale-green-themed kitchen shimmies in and out of Natasha Chivers’ lighting which spotlights and creates an eerily shadowed woodland; with the brief insertion of a park bench and deft use of a child’s yellow puffa jacket; which later multiply. For the most part it’s a quite brilliant circle recalling an early scare and a final self-recognition for more than one person.
The backdrop of kitchen where the family action takes place isn’t just stagecraft but a shrewd metaphor for the outfalls and tensions as the two other actors stop being shadows and begin to interact, bulking out with life. Jasper Talbot’s portrayal as Harry Parks’s on is guyed by puffa jackets and by some surprise appearances. But it’s chiefly crowned by the hilarity of Pike’s Parks trying to explain sex to him at twelve, wholly misreading the boy’s room. It’s been built up since Harry vanished briefly when about two, then subsequently bullied.
Michael (Jamie Glover), a KC who’s been pipped to the bench by his wife, tries hiding resentment. His one contribution to a 16-seat meal is cheese he’s ordered for delivery. His gloss on his own (c. 1990s) male culture seems redolent of the 1970s, though then when did such attitudes go out of fashion? Miller’s script though is occasionally tone-deaf to the brand of sexism rampant. Glover’s Michael would have been a young man in the 1990s: terms he uses were outmoded in the insinuating world of GQ, Loaded and Ladettes. What’s not in doubt though is Michael’s illiteracy about the manosphere and toxic male culture which emerge, the conversations to be had and who’s taking responsibility. Glover though delivers with the force of someone in love with his own voice as barrister and – despite his aggressive charisma – still a little perplexed at where he is now. As events trigger primal responses, Glover’s are remarkable for not simply reverting to any predictable type, but show capacity (eventually) for growth. Marital tension though arises elsewhere.
As the couple finish making love in the kitchen (with Pike’s commentary darkening her own counsel) Talbot’s Harry, now 18 slinks silently in, even more hangdog. Harry’s teen vulnerability alternates in the way Pike and Glover bicker over just what kind of vulnerability they’re looking at. Talbot’s particularly adept at shrugging of skins very slowly, flinching a psychic hurt as he smooches about and collapses, either drunk or exhausted.
The opening with a drumkit and guitar make no sense, despite composers Erin LeCount, James Jacob PKA Jakwob crafting a score which would be welcome elsewhere, led by Nick Pinchbeck. It’s banished after the opening, and despite a brief flurry of guitar by Jamie Glover it never features as a theme. Ben and Max Ringham’s sound does bring some stark effects. Willie Williams’ video on the other hand brings in an intriguing shadow-play of silhouettes dancing just once, and play on the Crown logo.
There’s inconsistencies in evidence too swiftly brushed away by the explanation of “confused”, and which afterwards had people querying it. A way through can be reasoned, but needs clarifying or at least emphasising: here in the hurtling denouement these carefully-articulated points are tossed away. Shifts in Parks’ position are believable, particularly in Pike’s hands. Thickets of legalese do erupt latterly though this surely is a reflex of panic. What’s not in doubt is the authenticity of a quandary raising the play to Ibsenite levels of flaw and resolution. After 15 years away from the stage, Pike returns in a blaze of morals versus the law. Her triumph though is unequivocal. Just the opposite of Miller’s absorbing Parks.
Matthew Amos director of screen has fully taken advantage of Chivers’ lighting and a range of camera angles to craft a livid format where lighting directors Gemma Sullivan and Marc Nicholson skilfully mix what’s on stage with greater depths. Conrad Fletcher’s sound allows the projection to mediate the volume heard from the stage, to subtly-worked cinema levels.
Other cast members: Louisa Clein (Alternate for Jessica Parks), Esma Akar, Liliana Argenio-Winch, Ella Critchell, Charles Dark, Ayrton English, Luke Garner-Greene, Sammy Jones, Thomas Michaelson.
Movement Director Lucy Hind, Composers Erin LeCount, James Jacob PKA Jakwob, Music Director Nick Pinchbeck, Sound Designers Ben and Max Ringham, Casting Director Alastair Coomer CDG, Casting Director Naomi Downham, Voice Coach William Conacher, Legal consultant Danielle Manson, Video Designer Willie Williams for Treatment Studio, Staff Director Grace Duggan.
