On the performance “Prima Faciewhich premiered Sunday night on Broadway, audiences get two wildly different experiences.
First, while we’re fully engrossed within the harrowing story of Tessa, a brilliant young attorney whose life is turned the other way up, we witness great pain and sadness as we watch her undergo a trauma that nobody should ever experience. Some viewers will understandably be overwhelmed by all of it.
One hour and 40 minutes non-stop. On the John Golden Theatre, 252 W. forty fifth St.
Then, because the curtain rolls as we exit the drama and return to our seats on the John Golden Theatre, we’re crammed with pure joy – because we have now just witnessed the emergence of a unprecedented latest stage talent.
That may be the sensational Jodie Comer, who won an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Russian hitman Villanelle on TV’s Killing Eve and is just pretty much as good – perhaps even higher – live and in person.
Prima Facie, which played in London’s West End last yr, someway marks Comer’s skilled stage debut. Under the most effective of circumstances, when a movie or TV star often first steps onto the boards, they’re praised for his or her surprising confidence and self-confidence – they stick around, and also you’re relieved that you would be able to actually hear them.
But Comer goes far beyond our basic expectations and enters higher levels of greatness. The 30-year-old actress is incredibly alive with the nuclear energy of novelty and the sheer strength of somebody who has been at it for a long time.
And “Prima Facie”, a one-man play by Suzie Miller, is the proper canvas for Comer’s incredible skills.
Her Tessa is a London-based solicitor who focuses on sexual assault cases and is particularly adept at finding holes – she believes sympathetically – within the plaintiffs’ vague memories. She considers herself a master of the “law game” and rejects suggestions that the defendants hire her to defend her just because she is a woman.
But when she is raped in her apartment by a friend she meets by likelihood, Tessa is offended after which goes against the very system she played a part in upholding.
Stretching over two years, the storyline introduces us to the multitudes of Tess: a brash lawyer initially, a daughter struggling to win her working-class mom’s approval, a fun-loving party girl, and eventually a victim who battles against all odds.
What’s most astounding in your complete film is Comer’s rapid changes in posture, voice, pace and body language that immediately and impressively reveal Tessa’s frame of mind. The actress moves heavy tables and chairs across the stage in director Justin Martin’s production and appears drastically different by the tip. I used to be delighted to be in a room with the identical person for 100 minutes uninterrupted.
Comer also becomes many other characters – Tessa’s mother, her assailant, friends, professors, cops – but it surely’s not the sort of play where we’re purported to admire an actor convincingly playing 30 different roles, like this season’s one-man “Carol.” It is Tessa’s journey that is fascinating, and Comer makes it much more fascinating.
Miller’s performance itself is not at all times as great because the resident actress. At times, the piece refers to old tropes and clichés of one-person performances and enters the territory of beat poetry.
And a few will consider Tessa’s final monologue to be more of a news essay than a character speech. But whenever you change that to a lawyer making his concluding remarks, the words make sense. Miller’s game works high-quality ultimately.
During my performance, Comer made two quick, graceful bows while the audience continued to applaud. Why do it? She surely knows this may not be her last standing ovation on Broadway.