‘Prima Facie’ Review: Jodie Comer Commands the Stage in Broadway Drama
Trish Deitch Here is my favorite thing about Suzie Miller’s Olivier Award-winning one-woman play “Prima Facie,” opening at Broadway’s Golden Theater tonight: About halfway through, it begins to rain, hard, from one end of the stage to the other—real water pouring from overhead—and continues raining long enough for audience members to begin to worry that Jodie Comer, the beloved co-star of “Killing Eve” who commands the stage for 100 minutes in “Prima Facie,” will catch a cold. Comer plays a young barrister who, out of blissful ignorance, used to feel fine about defending sexual predators, and now is the miserable, powerless victim of rape herself. The rain is not a baptism—it’s a device used to further humiliate her in her time of greatest humiliation. So here is my least favorite thing about the play: that I have to recommend it, even though I don’t love it—it’s not fun or entertaining or inspiringly good in the way theater can be. But this show, starring a popular television actress, will do its part in chipping away at the injustice that is women remaining voiceless and powerless after they’ve been sexually assaulted. And for that, “Prima Facie” deserves high praise—even adulation.