On the play “Prima Facie,” which opened Sunday night time on Broadway, the viewers is hit by two wildly totally different sensations.
First, as we develop into absolutely absorbed by the harrowing story of Tessa, an excellent younger barrister whose life is horribly upended, there’s nice ache and disappointment in watching her undergo a trauma no person ought to ever need to expertise. Some viewers will likely be understandably overwhelmed by all of it.
One hour and 40 minutes with no intermission. On the John Golden Theatre, 252 W. forty fifth St.
Then, at curtain name, as we step exterior of the drama and again into our seats on the John Golden Theatre, pure exhilaration washes over us — as a result of we now have simply witnessed the emergence of a unprecedented new stage expertise.
That might be the sensational Jodie Comer, who received an Emmy Award for taking part in the Russian murderer Villanelle on TV’s “Killing Eve,” and is each bit nearly as good — nay, even higher — reside and in-person.
“Prima Facie,” which performed London’s West Finish final 12 months, someway marks Comer’s skilled stage debut. In the most effective of circumstances, when a movie or TV star normally first treads the boards, they’re lauded for being surprisingly assured and assured — they maintain their very own, and also you’re relieved you possibly can really hear them.
However Comer goes far past our fundamental expectations and into the higher echelons of greatness. The 30-year-old actress is remarkably alive with each the nuclear power of newness and the sturdy power of somebody who’s been at it for many years.
And “Prima Facie,” the one-woman play by Suzie Miller, is a perfect canvas for Comer’s prodigious abilities.
Her Tessa is a London lawyer who makes a speciality of sexual-assault circumstances, and is very adept at poking holes — sympathetically, she believes — within the plaintiffs’ fuzzy recollections. She sees herself as a grasp of “the sport of legislation” and bats away solutions that accused males rent her to defend them simply because she’s a lady.
However when she is raped at her condo by a colleague who she’s been casually seeing, Tessa finds herself resenting after which opposing the exact same system she has performed an element in propping up.
The plot, which spans greater than two years, permits us to fulfill a large number of Tessas: the swaggering lawyer initially, the daughter who fights for her working-class mother’s approval, the fun-loving partier and, lastly, the sufferer who battles towards all odds.
Most astonishing all through are Comer’s fast shifts in posture, voice, tempo and physique language that immediately and impactfully reveal Tessa’s way of thinking. The actress shoves heavy tables and chairs across the stage in director Justin Martin’s manufacturing, and appears drastically totally different by the top. I used to be in awe that I’d been within the room with the identical individual for an uninterrupted 100 minutes.
Comer turns into many different characters, too — Tessa’s mom, her assailant, mates, professors, policemen — however this isn’t the form of play through which we’re meant to marvel at an actor convincingly enjoying 30 totally different elements like this season’s one-man “A Christmas Carol.” It’s Tessa’s journey that’s gripping, and Comer makes it extra so.
Miller’s play itself just isn’t at all times as sterling because the actress inhabiting it. At instances, the piece invokes previous tropes and cliches of one-person exhibits and veers into beat poetry territory.
And a few will discover Tessa’s last direct-address monologue to be extra of an on-message essay than an in-character speech. However while you reframe it as a lawyer delivering her closing remarks, the phrases make sense. Miller’s play works properly in the long run.
At my efficiency, Comer took two fast, gracious bows because the viewers saved on clapping. Why milk it? Absolutely she is aware of this received’t be her final standing ovation on Broadway.
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