'Inter Alia' review — Rosamund Pike gives a rock-star performance in this scorching legal drama

Read our review of Inter Alia, written by Suzie Miller, now in performances at the National Theatre to 13 September.

The law is on trial once again as Australian playwright Suzie Miller follows up her global hit Prima Facie, for which Jodie Comer won Olivier and Tony awards, with Inter Alia, which sees Rosamund Pike make a triumphant return to the stage. It’s a scorching drama, merciless in its dissection of our broken system, but deeply compassionate towards the people at its heart.

Jessica Parks (Pike) is a trail-blazing female crown court judge. Despite her high-powered career, the bulk of the domestic duties, including raising now-teenage son Harry, fall to her rather than to KC husband Michael – Miller’s depiction of the invisible labour borne by women, and blithely ignored by men, prompts groans of recognition. The title is both a legal term and sums up her feeling of existing in the cracks of everyone else’s needs.

Her middle-class family is then dealt a hammer blow: Harry is accused of rape by a classmate. Jessica, a proud feminist who has ruled on numerous harrowing sexual assault cases, must reckon with her own latent hypocrisy when forced into the perspective of the defendant.

Inter Alia follows on from both Prima Facie and recent TV phenomenon Adolescence in using drama as a galvanising force. You will leave this play feeling furious and heartbroken that our society has essentially legalised rape by making it near-impossible to secure a conviction, as well as terrified for a generation of young people – and their flailing parents – whose development is being warped by internet culture and the toxic manosphere.

That campaigning element is leavened with sharply observed humour. Jessica’s well-meaning attempt to have the online porn “talk” with Harry is perfectly excruciating, and her effort to manage separate-but-competing lives is wittily encapsulated by her wearing both colourful apron and judge’s wig.

Justin Martin’s production has terrific energy too. Pike gets a rock-star entrance, presiding over the court with a microphone and backed by drums and guitar: she is in her element. That kicks off an extraordinary, full-throttle performance which sees Pike juggle countless props, costume changes, time jumps, and even bigger leaps between contrasting parts of her persona (from sober judge to girl-power karaoke and caring mum) and conflicting emotional states.

However, once that breathless compartmentalising has been vividly conveyed, the show could take its foot off the gas. We need more space in which to fully absorb the family’s devastation, and later murky moral territory, without the production distractions – and the added challenge for the actors.

Unlike the one-woman Prima Facie, Inter Alia gives Pike two excellent co-stars. Jamie Glover conveys simmering resentment as the brash but less professionally successful Michael (Jessica must continually tiptoe around his ego), while Jasper Talbot is skilfully ambiguous as Harry, who is both sweetly awkward, a victim of bullying, and potentially concerning. Miller could thus cut back her descriptive (and sometimes blunt) narration and just let this trio cook.

Miriam Buether’s phenomenal design is like a Freudian nightmare. Jessica’s memory of losing Harry in the park when he was a little boy recurs in shiver-inducing visuals, as her chic kitchen is invaded by looming, shadowy trees. Her lasting need to protect him is also symbolised by his bright-yellow coat, worn both by the young and older Harrys.

Jessica’s dilemmas, and the play’s big, unanswerable questions, will stay with you long after you leave the theatre. This is a show that continues a vital conversation, and does so with empathy, care and burning conviction.

Inter Alia is at the National Theatre to 13 September, and will be screened via NT Live on 4 September. Book Inter Alia tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: Inter Alia (Photos by Manuel Harlan)