\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen Prima Facie premiered at the Stables Theatre in Sydney in 2019, it sliced through the theatre landscape. Suzie Miller\u2019s one-woman drama about a criminal barrister confronting the brutal inadequacies of sexual-assault prosecutions has since become a global phenomenon.<\/p>\n Starring Jodie Comer in London and on Broadway, it won an Olivier award in 2024, broke box-office records, has been staged in nearly 50 countries in many languages and resulted in real changes to how the law works. <\/p>\n For Miller, who came late to theatre after working as a human rights lawyer, the play\u2019s success was both a vindication and a provocation.<\/p>\n This year she combined courtroom, theatre and her domestic sphere in a more ambitious work, Inter Alia, commissioned by London\u2019s National Theatre and starring Saltburn\u2019s Rosamund Pike, who plays a crown court judge whose teenage son is accused of sexual assault by a girl he has grown up with. While Prima Facie puts the complainant\u2019s experience under the microscope, Inter Alia pivots the lens to ask: what happens when the wrongdoer is one of your own? What happens when the values of feminism and law collide with the instincts of motherhood?<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to refocus on how sexual assault doesn\u2019t fit neatly into the judicial system as it stands,\u201d Miller says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about law. It\u2019s about community values.\u201d<\/p>\n Inter Alia sold out before Pike started rehearsals, and received glowing reviews, with the Guardian calling it \u201ca searing commentary on the justice system and a purposefully uncomfortable insight into contemporary parenting\u201d. There has been speculation about a West End remount but, in the meantime, a filmed version is on screens in the UK and will land in Australian cinemas this month. A novelisation will be published in 2026.<\/p>\n <\/span>Suzie Miller: \u2018Every woman I know says they live in fear of their son being accused of something.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Sarah Hadley<\/p>\n Prima Facie and Inter Alia explore a system Miller knows intimately: its procedures, its blind spots and its language. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve stood beside someone in court, you understand the theatre of it,\u201d Miller says. \u201cBut you also see where justice fractures. Theatre lets me interrogate those fractures in ways the law never can.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of her writing process Miller interviewed female judges and lawyers \u2013 many, like Miller, mothers of sons \u2013 about a potentially ruinous conundrum: what if the system I uphold one day ensnares my child?<\/p>\n \u201cEvery woman I know says they live in fear of their son being accused of something and ending up in prison,\u201d Miller explains. \u201cNot because they want to excuse bad behaviour, but because they know the system is brutal and binary. Some women want perpetrators jailed. Others want acknowledgment, apology, repair. But the law rarely allows for anything between acquittal and a custodial sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Jasper Talbot as Harry and Rosamund Pike as Jessica in Inter Alia.<\/span> Photograph: Manuel Harlan<\/p>\n Inter Alia has been compared to the Netflix hit Adolescence: both ask audiences to consider how boys are inducted into masculinity and what happens when parents, particularly mothers, are shut out of that conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cYou raise these gorgeous, rambunctious boys,\u201d Miller says, \u201cand then as teenagers, mothers become less relevant. They\u2019re looking for male mentors, and I don\u2019t think they\u2019re finding them. Instead they get the internet, porn, locker-room banter. We don\u2019t equip them with tools to navigate that space. And we hand over their education in sex and relationships to the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller also interviewed men over 40 to glean insights for the father character in the play. Many confessed to uncomfortable memories of youthful encounters at drunken parties, and described a culture at that time where \u201cplaying hard to get\u201d was part of the script and notions of consent were hazy. \u201cA lot of men said they were scared to look back too closely,\u201d Miller says. \u201cIt\u2019s not that they think they raped anyone but they can\u2019t be absolutely sure that the other person\u2019s experience might not have been very different.\u201d<\/p>\n In Inter Alia, Pike\u2019s character is both judge and mother; the play shifts between the high rhetoric of the courtroom and the chaotic multitasking of family life. \u201cWhen she\u2019s in court she can control the narrative,\u201d Miller explains. \u201cAt home she can\u2019t. That\u2019s what women recognised in the play, the endless invisible labour, the way crises always default to mum, the humour of juggling it all. I\u2019ve spoken to a lot of women who said, \u2018I didn\u2019t realise I did this every day until I saw it on stage.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Pike\u2019s riveting performance marked the actor\u2019s return to live theatre for the first time in 14 years. Miller was impressed by her bravery. \u201cThis was a brand-new play, untested, sold out before she arrived at rehearsal,\u201d Miller says. \u201cShe knew there\u2019d be constant rewrites. That takes courage. But she has such elegance, such physicality. Working with an actor of that calibre lifts the writing enormously.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The Guardian said Pike gave a \u2018physical, occasionally anarchic performance\u2019 as Jessica, a judge, mother and wife.<\/span> Photograph: Manuel Harlan<\/p>\n Miller hints that Inter Alia may be the second in a loose trilogy. \u201cI\u2019ve looked at it from the complainant\u2019s side, now from the family\u2019s side,\u201d she says. \u201cThe next one will be another portal again.\u201d She is also developing new works for London, Sydney and Brisbane next year,<\/strong> including a drama based on the creation of the Australian women\u2019s football league titled Strong Is the New Pretty.<\/p>\n Miller confesses to feeling wary of being pigeonholed as a crusader-playwright bent on reforming the justice system. Her work, she insists, is less about answers than questions but the questions cut deep.<\/p>\n What if the blunt instrument of criminal law is the wrong tool for the nuance of sexual consent? How do we raise sons who can be respectful in all the worlds, real and virtual, that they inhabit? And what represents \u201cjustice\u201d to female victims of sexual violence?<\/p>\n \u201cIf the only punishment is prison, who will ever apologise? Who will ever admit they overstepped? We need other avenues. Sex lives are messy. Drugs, alcohol, youth \u2026 they complicate it. The law makes it binary, but lived experience isn\u2019t binary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Prima Facie premiered at the Stables Theatre in Sydney in 2019, it sliced through the theatre landscape. Suzie Miller\u2019s one-woman drama about a criminal barrister confronting the brutal inadequacies of sexual-assault prosecutions has since become a global phenomenon. Starring Jodie Comer in London and on Broadway, it won an Olivier award in 2024, broke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5496,9999,5501,8062,547,1145,5188,14128,4394,6000,5500,14127,5502],"class_list":{"0":"post-23106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-alia","9":"tag-boys","10":"tag-facie","11":"tag-followup","12":"tag-inter","13":"tag-internet","14":"tag-male","15":"tag-mentors","16":"tag-miller","17":"tag-porn","18":"tag-prima","19":"tag-suzie","20":"tag-theatre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}