Inter Alia review – Rosamund Pike rules in searing legal drama from Prima Facie team

The Guardian

4 days ago

Three years ago, playwright Suzie Miller gave Jodie Comer a career-defining role with her West End debut in Prima Facie. Rosamund Pike's stage CV already has plenty of highs, from Hitchcock Blonde to Hedda Gabler, but her performance in Miller's follow-up play has been keenly anticipated, given that it reunites some of the team that made Prima Facie a smash hit.
This is an almost deliberate counterpoint to Prima Facie, in which a defence lawyer, expert at playing the system to demolish rape charges against her clients, is undone by her own experience of sexual assault. Miller wanted to highlight how poorly the law serves victims, and Inter Alia presents the same issue from the flipside with a female judge, determined to make the system more just, whose world is upended by an accusation close to home.
Jessica Parks (Pike) is the kind of multi-skilled woman you just know the legal system needs more of. She brings humanity and compassion to her courtroom, employing her soft skills to protect vulnerable witnesses while cutting down cocky male counsel with a tone that can 'cut through tendons and bone'. But she's not just a crown court judge, she's also an expert juggler, in the way that high-achieving women so often need to be. Her career exists 'inter alia' – as Miller puts it, in the cracks of everyone else's lives.
All the hallmarks of Justin Martin's pulsating direction are here, from the onstage guitar and drums ratcheting up the tension to Pike's physical, occasionally anarchic performance. She is in constant motion, wearing many different outfits – karaoke queen, sexy wife, Marigold-clad dishwasher and laundrywoman – and Miriam Buether's set combines with Natasha Chivers' lighting to capture the dissolution of boundaries between the courtroom and home.
'You live like you work, everything done at speed,' a friend tells Jessica: it may sound like a badge of honour, but it's also an indictment of the society that requires it of her. The term 'emotional labour' is never used but is certainly present: while Jessica prepares a dinner party for 16, her husband Michael's only responsibility is the cheese. He has it delivered.
This is not a solo show: Jamie Glover provides the marital tension as Michael, who has been beaten by his wife to both KC and the bench. Harry, their 18-year-old son, mooches about almost silently, alternating, in Jasper Talbot's portrayal, between sensitive, sulky and comically drunk. But what begin as peripheral figures – to be organised, loved and cared for – are given vital voices of their own as the narrative progresses.
Jessica remains the moral and emotional centre: her tragedy unfolds like that of an Ibsen protagonist failed by those around them. As a mother she has done the best she can, both to shield her child from bullies and to raise him true to her feminist beliefs (there's a very funny scene where they have the porn talk). But she can't protect him from social media, or peer pressure or, in the end, himself.
As a lawyer turned playwright, Miller's work has an ingrained advocacy – for years, she has used it to argue for social and legal justice. And one of the rare objections to Prima Facie's script – the way its didactic dialogue impinged on the drama – could be upheld here. Determined to give every issue and angle a fair hearing, Inter Alia sheds its nimbleness and wit as it grapples with the serious stuff in its later stages, meaning the pace slows even as the confrontations become more heightened.
As the set darkens and Jessica becomes literally lost in the woods, there's a sense that we're all groping, a little blindly, towards an ending, even Pike. But the production remains a searing commentary on the justice system and a purposefully uncomfortable insight into contemporary parenting. Prima Facie remains as relevant as it was three years ago – a UK tour, with a returning Comer, has been announced for 2026 – and this is an ideal companion piece.
At the Lyttelton theatre, National Theatre, London, until 13 September. In cinemas from 4 September.