Perth Voice Interactive

AUSTRALIAN playwright Suzie Miller’s one-woman play, Prima Facie has taken world stages by storm from Sydney to London’s West End and to Broadway. 

The British National Theatre’s video version is its best-selling production and is compulsory viewing for trainee judges in at least one UK jurisdiction. 

Now, in this new Black Swan Theatre production it allows Perth’s Sophia Forrest to give an acting masterclass. 

From the moment she comes swishing onto the sparsely ornamented stage as Tessa, a top-notch barrister, Forrest commands the stage. 

On opening night, she held the audience in the palm of her hand. 

Tessa is young, tough and brilliant, and Miller’s writing gives entry not only to her inner world but opens up a whole realm of others. 

Similar to how ancient bards voiced different characters while reciting sagas, through Forrest we hear her working-class mother, police officers, hospital workers and others – and she keeps that up for one and a half hours, alone on stage. 

Tessa has worked her way up from poor origins to be at the top of her game. 

She explains to the audience how she revels in defending her clients and lets us know the secrets of her cross examination success. 

She combines psychological insights into witnesses with subtle manipulation to leave them unprepared for the machine-gun like, rapid fire questions with which she destroys their credibility. 

She loves winning and her moral universe revolves around the law. 

If a guilty party walks free because of her skills that is the fault of the prosecutor for failing to mount a sufficient case. 

An unexpected event forces her to discover where legal morality and human integrity diverge.

The event is horrible: she is raped.

Forrest takes the audience through the event adroitly.

Only she is on the bed on stage, but the viewer goes through the experience with her.

Suddenly the supremely self-confident lawyer discovers the reality of victimhood, where power lies within the patriarchal system of law, what the burden of proof means for a witness and where morality diverges from legality.

To make such a shift in characterisation believable the actor must walk a tightrope between over- and under-dramatisation. The audience must be taken on a journey into the interior of Tessa’s emotions and confusions and know it to be authentic.

Forrest did just that. The standing ovations after the set went dark were well-earned.

As is typical of Black Swan they connected the audience with the social issue of rape outside of the play.

Leaflets were distributed on behalf of waconsent.com urging people to get active because WA is one of the only jurisdictions in Australia that does not acknowledge in the Criminal Code how intoxication affects the ability to consent to sexual acts.

Prima Facie Black Swan Theatre Until July 21 Heath Ledger Theatre Tix: blackswantheatre.com.au/ season-2024/prima-facie 

by BARRY HEALY