United Kingdom National Theatre Live’s Inter Alia – a new play by Suzie Miller: Broadcast live (directed for the screen by Matthew Amos) from the National Theatre’s Lyttelton Theatre, London, to Cineworld Basildon, Essex, 4.9.2025. (JPr)
Playwright Suzi Miller introduced Inter Alia in the National Theatre programme with ‘There are so many invisible lines and boundaries that women must negotiate between motherhood, marriage, professional lives and being women in society. The overlap and competing expectations are challenging at best and often overwhelming. For women generally there is another layer, the social judgement of women trying to manage it all. Jessica’s character is a “judge” but so too is the character of Jessica being judged: for her parenting, her choices, her work hours, her femininity, her feminism, her role as a life partner, and more. Like so many women trying to meet so many competing demands, Jessica also judges herself.’
It was three years ago that Suzie Miller’s play Prima Facie revealed Jodi Comer – in her West End debut – as (I wrote, review here) ‘one of the outstanding stage actors of her generation’. For a UK and Ireland tour next year, Comer is returning to the role of successful defence barrister, Tessa, whose life goes downhill after an alcohol-fuelled evening. While I will not reveal any major spoilers about Prima Facie for those who have not seen it in the theatre – or thanks to National Theatre Live – Miller returns to the topic of sexual violence when Inter Alia takes a darker turn near the end just as Prima Facie did.
Inter Alia is not entirely a sequel though it could quite easily have been. Comer’s Tessa is – as I wrote before – ‘up against a judicial system where the accused is presumed innocent unless it is proved otherwise and has an institutionalised male bias’. Tessa gets her day in court at the end of Prima Facie, and it would have been interesting to have Jessica the judge in the case against the man who allegedly raped her, especially since Inter Alia begins with a rape case. In both these plays Miller’s conclusion is that the law seems to serve victims badly.
At the percussive start thanks to the guitar and drums played on the stage, Jessica is shown in court where she takes no prisoners (!) and is quick to put male barristers in their place. She is also keen to dispense justice with an even hand and show compassion – if needed – for the rape victim. However, the title of the play means ‘among other things’ and she must juggle this public life with her private one which includes her teenage son Harry ringing her while in court to ask where a shirt of his is. Unfortunately for Jessica her day job will bleed into her home life; as when she has spontaneous sex with her husband Michael, she cannot get a graphic video shown in court out of her mind.
We see almost everything through Jessica’s eyes, including her doubts about how much her career has held her back from bringing Harry up properly. A tense early scene sees Jessica – distracted by a work call – losing an infant Harry for a worrying time when at a playground. The oddly feckless Michael – who is also a barrister – is jealous of his wife’s success believing it is because of her gender and not her abilities. For instance, his help towards a dinner party for 16 friends and colleagues is just to buy the cheese. It is left to Jessica to do most of the rest of the chores (cooking, washing, ironing etc. etc.) demanded by family life, including talking to Harry – in two very funny scenes – about the dangers of paedophiles and pornography. The older Harry becomes a typical moody, taciturn, virtually monosyllabic teenager who Jessica can no longer throw a maternal cordon around as she did when he was much younger. We can sympathise with Harry about the pressures of growing up in the world as it is today, particularly with the all-pervading influence of social media (especially the manosphere) but not with how things unravel for him when he believes he can become ‘one of the boys’.
Jessica’s instinct is to do everything she can to protect her son in the total belief of his innocence, however as the play reaches its agonising end, she realises Harry is just as ‘lost’ as he was in that playground years before.
Director Justin Martin was working again with Miriam Buether (sets and costumes) and Natasha Chivers (lighting) and never allows the play to let up. There is a basic simple set of sofa, table, chairs and a kitchen familiar from any sitcom but it can morph into a court room, playground, karaoke bar (in a scene needing to be seen to be believed), to a haunting forest. A limp microphone is a metaphor for deflated male ego and a small yellow anorak represents the infant Harry.
It is an understatement that the impressive Rosamund Pike is a tour de force as Jessica and she is rarely still over 105 minutes; not only supplying myriad voices and changing her costume on the stage (at one point a kitchen apron turns into judge’s robes) but also helping with scene changes. I think there is an argument that it is all a little unrelenting but Inter Alia does engage and involve you and for me, it maintained its grip throughout. Intriguingly at the end the applause in the Lyttelton Theatre did seem rather muted and I had expected the cast to receive more of an ovation.
Of course, Rosamund Pike carries the emotional heart of Inter Alia as Jessica but Michael and Harry, merely peripheral figures in her life at first, become more and more central to Miller’s exploration of the effects of toxic masculinity on the young, as well as the issues of consent and coercion. Both Jamie Glover (Michael) and Jasper Talbot (Harry) are real and relatable as their characters and also impressed as rock musicians.
Jim Pritchard
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Featured Image: Rosamund Pike in Inter Alia © Manuel Harlan
Creatives:
Director – Justin Martin
Set and Costume designer – Miriam Buether
Lighting designer – Natasha Chivers
Movement and Intimacy director – Lucy Hind
Composers – Erin LeCount, James Jacob PKA Jakwob
Music director – Nick Pinchbeck
Sound designers – Ben and Max Ringham
Video designers – Willie Williams for Treatment Studio
Cast:
Jessica Parks – Rosamund Pike
Michael Wheatley – Jamie Glover
Harry Wheatley – Jasper Talbot
Ensemble – Louisa Clein, Luke Garner-Greene, Thomas Michaelson
Children – Esma Akar, Liliana Argenio-Winch, Edward Butler, Ella Critchell, Charles Dark, Ayrton English