By Nadia Free­man

Prima Facie shares an authen­t­ic story of a woman’s exper­i­ence of assault and nav­ig­at­ing the judi­cial sys­tem to seek justice. The nearly sell-out sea­son demon­strates that des­pite the raw and chal­len­ging sub­ject, there is a strong call­ing for stor­ies like this.  

Rape is a word people don’t want to say, and for this reas­on a sub­ject not tackled enough in pub­lic dis­cus­sion or art. When sexu­al assault is por­trayed in tele­vi­sion, movies etc. the vic­tim all too often aligns to the pro­file of a per­fect dam­sel in dis­tress.  And fre­quently the assault is por­trayed as being com­mit­ted by a stranger. 

The real­ity is eight out of ten rapes are com­mit­ted by someone the per­son knows, and a third by their cur­rent or former spouse. The trauma and some­times ongo­ing abuse impacts on their men­tal health, rela­tion­ships, and employ­ment. The sweet, inno­cent, infal­lible vic­tim trope is a dan­ger­ous rhet­or­ic that causes sur­viv­ors who don’t fit the pro­file to be scru­tin­ised.

The writ­ing for the play is excep­tion­al. The story has a fun start as Tessa describes the thrill of courtroom com­bat. She is con­fid­ent, per­haps arrog­ant. She has a dog­mat­ic belief in the fair­ness of the law.  We the audi­ence are lured into a sense of com­radery as she brushes off sen­ti­ments of unfair­ness and suc­cess­fully secures ‘not guilty’ out­comes for her cli­ents.

Through the unwaver­ing act­ing of Mel Dodge, we are right there with Tessa the whole time.  I don’t neces­sar­ily like Tessa, but I like spend­ing time with her. She is brave and intel­li­gent, she works very hard and puts time into the people around her. 

The pace of the storytelling holds strong thanks to the Dir­ect­ing of Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford at no point does it lose my atten­tion.  And the set design appears very simple at first but reveals itself to be extremely impact­ful.

At times I loved the sound design, the music build­ing up ten­sion and sus­pense or craft­ing a sense of space and time. But there were oth­er moments where a noise or sound-effect dis­trac­ted me from focus­ing on the dia­logue.  And while most of the script held strong, the con­flict between Tessa’s pro­fes­sion­al life and fam­ily life in par­tic­u­lar her broth­ers, didn’t add much to the story or char­ac­ter.

The end­ing sits close to the real­ity of the sys­tem that all assault vic­tims face. This show is a clear cry out to change the sys­tem from the needs of those accused, to that of sup­port­ing vic­tims. The story speaks for itself and for this reas­on I don’t think it needed the final clos­ing mono­logue.

Over­all Prima Facie presents a top-class pro­duc­tion and the res­ult of a team that works like a well-oiled machine.  A cred­it to Kava­nah Pro­duc­tions & BRAVE Theatre for present­ing this import­ant work and bring­ing the show to New Zea­l­and audi­ences.

With only 7% of rape in NZ repor­ted to the Police, Prima Facie is an import­ant story that is already mak­ing an impact. The show is now a man­dat­ory view­ing for high court judges in North­ern Ire­land before they sit on the bench.  In New Zea­l­and, law­yers get two Con­tinu­ing Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment points if they see this pro­duc­tion. Art can and does make an impact.

I would like to see more present­a­tions like it  and more diversity in the stor­ies told. As one in four women has exper­i­enced sexu­al assault, it affects women of all cul­tures and eco­nom­ic back­grounds and stor­ies of mar­gin­al­ised groups also need to be heard.