Everyman / National Theatre
Before the play starts, there's a brief panel discussion. The legal expert says that in some countries, there are special courts, apart from the normal judicial system, which deal with allegations of serious sexual assault. A person who has been subjected to a traumatic experience may not have a clear memory of all the relevant details; and the memories can become more confused if they are forced to relive the trauma in court. A normal, combative cross-examination is bound to show up contradictions in the victims account; meaning that a conscientious jury will rightly vote to acquit.
Although I knew that the rate of convictions in rape cases is very low, this particular point had not occurred to me before: that the principles of consistent evidence and proof beyond reasonable doubt make it almost impossible to convict a rapist. Our court set-up -- our very definition of justice -- ensures that the majority of rapists will get away with it.
Having heard an eminent lawyer makes this point in four or five sentences, it seemed a bit unnecessary to have to watch a very good actor taking an hour and half to get to the same place.
Tessa Ensler is a highly successful criminal barrister (from working class roots) who specialises in defending cases of sexual assault. After a drunken date she takes another lawyer from her chambers to her home, where he rapes her. She eventually appears in court, and is subjected to the same interrogation techniques she herself has used against witnesses.
It's a one person drama -- a ninety minute monologue by Jodie Comer. She is sufficiently well known as a result of Killing Eve that the Sofa Cinema did four separate showings, all sold out -- unheard of for a Live From the National Theatre event. The material is sufficiently charged and explicit that one hesitates to review it: if I were to say "I didn't think the play was terribly good" some people would undoubtedly hear me say "I don't think rape is bad." And similarly, if I think that rape is bad and that we need to re-examine the way we handle rape trials -- which, for the avoidance of doubt, I do -- then I am more or less obliged to say that I thought it was a very good play.
The first section takes us through Tessa's typical day in court, with flashbacks to law school and scenes in the family home. We see how she cleverly traps witnesses in lies or inconsistencies; and hear the self-justification that she is not getting bad people off; merely pointing out holes in the prosecution case without which the police would become lazy or dishonest. She deliberately and provocatively addresses a police sergeant as Constable in order to demonstrate to the jury that he sometimes loses his temper -- which seems to be very much the same kind of thing Henry Fonda did to Juror Number Ten.
Comer is talking directly to the audience, and playing, or implying, all the characters in the story. It's a virtuoso performance although I did start to feel a little weary after being shouted at for twenty minutes.
Is acting an art or a craft? Is it harder for an actor to stand alone in front of an audience and create a character and a situation that we engage with; or is the trick of delivering compelling lines much the same whether you are a one-person show or part of a cast of thousands? Very many people stand alone in front of audience for hours at a time and make them laugh.
The depiction of the date, the rape, and process of reporting what happened to the police, was extremely powerful (but not, I think, either sensational or prurient). We are left in no doubt that so-called date rape is as brutal, humiliating and traumatic as any other assault. And we experience at an emotional level how an apparently respectable man can turn into a predator; and how a clever, confident woman can make a series of terrible mistakes, and that it in no way follows that she is to blame for the man's actions.
The narrative relies on a Shavian level of contrivance. Both complainant and accused are eminent criminal lawyers. There's an ironic reversal whereby one expert lawyer becomes the accused and the other becomes the witness. The writer goes to great lengths to create a situation where no-one in the audience can be in any doubt about what happened: but where the circumstances are such that any jury would have many valid reasons to doubt Tessa's word. Half way through a merciless cross-examination, she finds her voice and starts to emotionally address the court about the ways in which assault victims are ill-served by the system. The judge sends the jury out (voir dire) and allows Tessa to continue to speak for an inordinately long time. This is pointedly the only moment when the camera pulls back from the Harold Pinter stage and lets us see the rest of the theatre: we've pretty much dropped the pretence that we're listening to a character addressing an English courtroom and admitted that this is a playwright haranguing a theatre audience. I found myself thinking of Saint Joan.
Tessa's rapist is acquitted; the play doesn't really offer any suggestions about what better way of doing things there might be. Some kind of inquisitorial system, I suppose; or a Truth and Reconciliation panel which allows for grey areas between "he goes to prison for a very long time" and "he goes home without a stain on his character".
Comer's performance is remarkable, but the actual play is weighed down by its thesis: it's an essay in a legal paper or a feminist journal rather than a drama. Which is, I fully concede, one of the things which Legitimate Theatre has always done; and probably the exact thing which our national theatre is there to do.
Although there were extensive trigger warnings in the actual production, the production was trailed simply as a play about a barrister: you didn't necessarily know that it was a story about a rape until the lights went down.
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