By Suzy Miller
SUPREME EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Drama
Tessa is a thoroughbred.
A young barrister at the height of her considerable powers. During cross-examination, she plays the witness like a master-conjurer. Feigning ignorance, projecting incompetence whilst slowly tightening the noose around the witness’ neck. By the time the witness knows they’ve been duped, it’s too late. They’ve fallen into the cunning trap which Tessa set them twenty-five questions ago. All is lost.
Tessa glories in her genius. Like so many of her narcissistic breed, she’s happy to tell us how she did it. Like a magician explaining their sleight of hand.
But Tessa is human.
Soon, as a victim of crime, she’ll find herself in the witness box. Where her view of the courtroom is very different.
Exquisite Writing
Suzy Miller’s script is tight, witty, intriguing and the provocation for hours of deep thought. Insightful and sometimes inciteful.
The story explores what we mean by the truth. There’s truth in reality and then there’s legal truth; the inexorable, unavoidable finding of fact the law will typically make when defined dots are joined.
And then there’s women striving to establish the truth in a legal framework designed by men. How does a woman’s credibility survive when the system is calibrated by reference to how men might behave in a given set of circumstances or, worst still, how men think a woman would behave in those circumstances?
Superb Acting
I thought Sof Forrest was outstanding in this one woman play.
Her metamorphosis from self-assured, self-satisfied master cross-examiner to dishevelled, disheartened victim of crime was believable. From dancing swan to harried mouse. Everything from her body language to the pace of her speech spoke of her fall.
But it was the little things which caught my attention and made be lean forward in my theatre seat. The triumphant pirouette when explaining the art of cross-examination. The attentive face when listening to a character who was not even present on the stage, before delivering her side of the conversation. It was a performance, not just a delivery of rehearsed lines.
What My Eyebrows Told Me
I enjoyed every moment of Prima Facie and my eyebrows remained in a Supreme Arch all the way home from the theatre.
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