Writer: Suzie Miller
Director: Justin Martin
Rosamund Pike plays a blinder as a judge in Suzie Miller’s new play. Caught in a man’s world, Jessica Parks attempts to make her courtroom more human and more moral, a tough ask when the law is neither. As well as presiding over her courtroom – initially imagined as a thrilling piece of gig theatre – she has to run the household and look after her barrister husband and 18-year-old son. She has a good life, but when one of her family is arrested for a crime, Jessica discovers that morality can be easily manipulated.
Jessica is one of few female judges, and she feels awkward about it, especially as she is now at a higher level than her husband. So as not to upset his masculine ego, Jessica agrees with him that her promotion was the result of positive discrimination by the judiciary to recruit more women to the bench. Despite her superior position, she still carries out the domestic chores. She cooks a dinner for 16 guests, does the laundry and finds her son’s missing Hawaiian shirt; all the inter alia of the title. Meanwhile, husband Michael and son Harry have band rehearsals.
Pike is never still over the 105 minutes, played without an interval. She is always changing clothes, or stuffing things into drawers or taking things out of the fridge. Jessica is relentlessly cheerful, successfully managing to balance life and work. She even has the time and energy to attend a colleague’s karaoke party, although she is back at home by 9pm, exhausted. And like all great actors, despite playing a character, Pike is still distinctly herself.
She enjoys the power that she wields in the courtroom, making sure that rape survivors are treated with dignity when cross-examined by the defence, especially as she’s fully aware that the conviction rate for rapists is extremely low. However, impairing her commitment to what is right is the glee she feels when putting one of the male barristers in his place. As she confesses, in contrast to her female colleague who worked quietly and ceaselessly to become a judge, she was more the “Pick Me! Pick Me!’ kind of girl.
Continually cheerful and delightfully impudent, Pike’s Jessica is staggeringly real and is fiercely protective of her son, ever since he went missing for a few minutes at the local playground, and then, later, when she discovered he was bullied at school. Pike ranges around Miriam Buether’s pristine design that comprises a state-of-the-art kitchen, and which begins to reveal behind it a dark forest, symbolic of the world that Jessica can’t control.
Not quite a one-woman show like Miller’s previous play, Prima Facie, which starred Jodie Cromer, the formidable Pike is joined by Jamie Glover as Michael and the incredible Jasper Talbot, who plays the unenviable role of Harry. Initially, these family members are almost silent as Jess introduces them in the kitchen, but later their roles develop into speaking parts, with Talbot utterly convincing in Harry’s complexity.
Despite the lack of an interval, Inter Alia never flags and nor does Pike, who must be the clear favourite for an Olivier award. Intelligent and gripping, Miller’s play is concerned with morality in the same way as Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma, Major Barbara and St Joan. Under Justin Martin’s stellar direction, Inter Alia is a play for our time, with no easy answers.
Runs until 13 September 2025
Inter Alia will also be available to watch in cinemas across the country and globe from 4 September with National Theatre Live.
