Inter Alia opens with Rosamund Pike wigged and gowned and rocking out, rasping ‘fuck the patriarchy’ into a mic. This is not a power ballad: the Saltburn and Gone Girl star plays Jess Parks, a pioneering feminist judge, and she is performing the emotional cut-and-thrust of a recent rape trial with relish, deploying her icy froideur to slay macho barristers who are attempting to slut shame vulnerable complainants.
The dimly lit blokes in the backing band are, it transpires, Parks' husband and son: a fitting setup for Suzie Miller's three-hand play that feels more like a 100-minute monologue. Like its companion legal drama Prima Facie, which was a massive hit starring Jodie Comer, Inter Alia is a spectacularly demanding showcase for a female star, and Pike delivers the goods with stadium-level charisma, intelligence and flair.
Miller’s play is based on interviews with female judges who juggle demanding careers with caring responsibilities and social lives: ‘inter alia’ means ‘among other things’. It's fun to see Pike in an earthier, more physical theatrical role, very different from the icy Hitchcock blondes she's known for on film. Initially, we see her dashing from court to robing room, fielding a dozen missed calls from her sweet bumbling lout of a teenage son, Harry (Cormac McAlinden) who can't find a Hawaian shirt for a party he's going to later, then dashing home to prepare a supper for guests while getting dolled up, taking phone calls and questions, and ironing Harry's shirt. Her suave, slightly laissez-faire husband Michael (Jamie Glover) has at least remembered to order the cheese.
Multitasking is the watchword for Justin Martin’s bold, high-energy production, which really relishes the plate-spinning scenario of working motherhood, sending Pike bouncing all over Miriam Buether’s wonderful set, a pistachio-green kitchen-diner whose cupboard doors pop open to supply the props needed for the various different aspects of her life: a slinky red husband-pleasing dress; her judge’s wig; a steaming iron; a tray of baked fish; a karaoke mic.
What's at stake is not ‘having it all’, but ‘doing it all’. It's familiar material, but Pike's humour and commitment and the confidence of the production elevate it. Flashbacks to Harry's early years show that she's haunted by the content of her cases and neurotically, comically over-coaches her growing son about paedophilia, porn and post #MeToo consent: ‘three little words’, she reminds him, ‘is this OK’. Parks’ spinning plates are heaped with maternal and professional guilt: the judge is always judging herself most harshly.
Pike delivers the goods with stadium-level charisma, intelligence and flair
When Harry returns from his party dead drunk with a scratch on his face, it's obvious how the stakes will be raised. A girl whom Harry hooked up with makes a complaint. What happened? Is this an exceedingly rare case of #NotMe? Or are we headed into Adolescence for mums?
I wish that Miller's play had stayed in this question for longer, or perhaps teased out some of the human and complexities of desire and consent, beyond their legal framework. Inter Alia advocates for the rights of women and rape victims and rightly calls attention to their woeful rates of reporting and conviction (one in four women in the UK has been sexually assaulted or raped; most assaults go unreported and of those that do, only one-to-two percent go to trial). But advocacy wins out over drama, which tends to flourish in murkier, less clear-cut territory. The facts of this case emerge implausibly swiftly and clearly, and the focus returns to Jess’ moral dilemma: is she a mother or a judge first? It's not really a dilemma at all, and it's here that the monologue-like structure of the play, which makes it such a good star vehicle, weakens its scope of moral inquiry.
It feels odd that the voice of the complainant is never heard: a scene between her and Jess could have been electrifying. But this is a one-woman show. There's hardly any dialogue and most additional characters are snippets: accented voices performed by the versatile Pike. Harry and Michael never really emerge from the backing band, although Jamie Glover as Michael does skewer the shamefaced shrug of the middle aged father who is trying not to pass on the rapey culture he internalised as a young man, but can't bring himself to reckon with it either, and consequently avoids talking about intimacy at all with his son.
Some last-minute comments about the manosphere feel tacked on to male characters whom the play does not try to get to know. It's less a case of ‘all men are bastards’; more that ‘all men are bit players’. As this punchy, thought-provoking drama suggests but doesn't explore, manosphere cultures are in part a backlash to the Girlboss-to-Mumboss liberal feminist success story which has brought Jess and real women like her into the limelight. They are desperately and brilliantly spinning plates, whilst something sinister unfolds behind them in the shadows, near the knuckle and close to home.
