Inter Alia review: Rosamund Pike is “incredible”
Pike’s performance in this West End play is a kinetic tour de force.
Pike’s performance in this West End play is a kinetic tour de force.
After a sold-out run at the National Theatre last summer, Inter Alia transfers to the West End on a wave of praise for its leading lady, Rosamund Pike. Believe the hype. She’s incredible here.
Rising up through a trapdoor with mic stand in hand, Jessica Parks (Pike) is a rock star of the courtroom – a Crown Court judge who rules her roost like a judicial Janis Joplin, raging against misogyny and the perpetrators of sexual assault.
But that’s not all Jessica is. Inter alia is Latin for 'among other things', and there are many other things that Jessica is juggling away from her day job – not least her roles as a wife and mother to her less-successful barrister husband, Michael, and their 18-year-old son, Harry.
She’s a feminist, too, and a party-thrower, as well as a homemaker who deadpans to her husband that, yes, she’ll pick up a bottle of the red wine that he likes “as well as giving directions to a jury, sentencing a couple of cases, doing the big shop and coming home to cook it all”.
Suzie Miller’s script pinwheels from scene to scene and past to present, with Pike in constant motion throughout – changing clothes at rapid speed, jumping on tables, singing karaoke (badly on purpose), and puppeteering her son in his younger years via an animated anorak.
It’s ferociously funny stuff, playfully exploring the perils of motherhood (example: she thinks Harry has been watching porn and gives him “the talk”, but actually he’s been playing videogames) and the exhaustion of plate-spinning. Then things take a dark turn when Harry is accused of rape, and Jessica is forced to wonder if there’s a difference between moral and legal guilt.
Miller also penned legal drama Prima Facie, which won plaudits for Jodie Comer’s extraordinary performance as a barrister defending men accused of sexual assault, whose view of the legal system shifts when she herself is sexually assaulted.
Inter Alia is a companion piece of sorts, although Prime Facie is a one-woman show. Here, Pike is supported by Jamie Glover, who makes the most of the somewhat underwritten husband role, and Cormac McAlinden, superb as the petulant teenage son whose sense of decency is at odds with his actions.
But this is Pike’s show and she’s sensational. Her performance is such a kinetic tour de force that it’s no wonder she looks totally exhausted at the curtain call, as wrung out as the audience at the end of a 100-minute rollercoaster ride.
Inter Alia is at the Wyndham’s Theatre, London, until 20 June.
Saga has teamed up with London Theatre Direct to offer you tickets at the best prices and with savings of up to 60%.
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