Written by Suzie Miller,a lawyer turned playwright,the story is narrated by a charismatic criminal defence barrister who made her reputation defending men accused of rape. Her world is turned inside out and wrong way around when she herself is raped by a colleague. She knows it won’t be an easy case to prove – her word against his – but she decides to press charges. She wants to believe the law works for victims as well as those wrongly accused. It is,after all,the system to which she has dedicated her life.
The trial,of course,doesn’t go well. The point Miller wants to make with this ironic reversal of fortune is that even someone who understands what will happen – even an expert in criminal law who knows barristers and all the tricks of cross-examination – even she can too easily be made to seem confused and unsure of herself. The system,Miller declares,must be reformed.
Prima Facie is the sort of play that reminds you that once upon a time the theatre was a serious moral institution and a powerful force for the propagation of ideas. More than that,however,Prima Facie is a remarkable vehicle for a star performer. It’s rapid and insistent,with a final prose aria that culminates in rage and frustration and steely resolution.
Now Miller has knocked together a less than satisfactory novelisation of her own script. The text of the original is still there,dutifully copied over,but it’s spoiled with a lot of lifeless detail and tedious backstory. For anyone who has seen the play – performed by Sheridan Harbridge in Australia,or Killing Eve star Jodie Comer in London and New York – this scrappy bit of long-form entrepreneurialism will seem like the blandest possible substitute.
Really,this is not a novel at all but an extended film treatment written in the first person. It’s a colourless summary of what the story might become when the director shouts “action”. Miller still punctuates like a playwright – which is to say,haphazardly – but there’s none of the spiky emotional dynamism of the original script.