The playwright behind Prima Facie takes on a new challenge

In Inter Alia, former lawyer Suzie Miller shows that abusers can come from all types of families. 

Jessica Parks is a hard-nosed feminist, helicopter mother and judge in a justice system traditionally shaped by men. On paper, she is overqualified to raise a responsible citizen. In reality, she becomes the next of kin to her own son in a rape case. He is not the victim, but the defendant. In Inter Alia , Suzie Miller returns to the theme of Prima Facie, but lets us see the case from the defendant's side. The play reveals how the son is part of a digital world that is evolving faster than his mother's control: characterized by misogyny, porn and an unhealthy masculinity. 

Women face higher expectations

The Latin phrase Inter Alia , the play's title, means, among other things : “The phrase is mainly used in formal contexts, but in this play it becomes a symbol of how working women juggle their lives,” says playwright Suzie Miller. In Inter Alia, the subtle bias in the distribution of caregiving responsibilities comes to the fore. The highly respected judge Jessica Parks is expected to prioritize the needs of her child over her own career. The partner's role as a father is less problematic. Research from the University of Cambridge shows that single fathers are more often met with praise and admiration for taking responsibility for their own children than single mothers, who are more exposed to social criticism. In the past year, there have been several tabloid stories about how Kim Kardashian's daughter, North West, dresses too “adult” and “sexualized” for her age. The criticism is always directed at Kim as a mother. The child's father, Kanye West, receives a lot of criticism, but it is rarely directed at his role as a father. Similarly, Sophie Elise Isachsen's parenting has received much more media coverage in Norway than other controversial male influencers with children. One example is Sebastian Solberg, who is no stranger to sharing intimate details of his family life. In the piece, Miller illustrates how women today are expected to handle their children's emotional needs and organize their daily lives (a full-time job in itself), while being constantly evaluated by teachers, colleagues, other parents, and, most importantly, themselves. 

"Ugh! The fucking patriarchy!"

The hall is filled with a soft classical piece of music before the performance begins. On the stage hangs a traditional emblem consisting of a horse, lion and a crown – the British coat of arms. I barely manage to Google what this is before the music starts to break. “Ugh! The fucking patriarchy!” shouts the Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike as she is lifted onto the stage like a true rock star. She breaks up the solemn and stiff atmosphere in the hall. The coat of arms begins to flash in red strobe light and the classical piece is replaced by rock drums and electric guitar, played live.

I interpret Pike's death metal-like stage presence as a way of showing how she tries to bring her own activism into the role of judge. When a lawyer tries to pressure a witness, Jessica thinks out loud: “It's here that I can effect change. I signal to the jury that these are real people doing the best they can to give evidence for the court”. This is an example of how Jessica uses her power to influence the system from within. In the program, Miller herself expresses that she is critical of the use of abuse stereotypes and that stressed witnesses are pressured too hard in court. 

Pike, who plays Jessica Parks, conducts a cross-examination in an assault case as if the courtroom were a rock concert. She stands in full judge's garb and shouts her lines into a handheld microphone. The dialogue is structured like in Prima Facie, Miller's play from 2019, which was performed at the National Theatre in Oslo. Pike alternates between inner and outer voices and gives life to all the characters alone. The exception is Jessica's son and husband, who are played by the musicians on stage. Pike's judge's voice is confident and controlled, while the inner dialogue is intense, like an adrenaline rush with the same nerve as when Cezinando performs songs from the new album “Sinekyre 3”. 

 Two different sides of the guilt issue

The courtroom is Jessica's area, as it was also for Hedda Prize winner Maria Hildonen as lawyer Tessa Ensler in the National Theatre's Prima Facie . Where Tessa is young and new to the system, Jessica is part of it, more experienced, more hardened and harder to shake. Prima Facie is a monologue performance in which Hildonen plays with a physical, almost animalistic excess in the courtroom scenes. Pike does the opposite and takes the stage with mature control. It is cool to see how the actors adopt two completely different expressions within two scripts that have a very similar style, but different issues. Both characters must in their own way reassess their understanding of evidentiary requirements in the legal system, but from two different sides of the question of guilt. Tessa experiences how difficult it is to be believed in an assault case, and how the system she previously worked for is not necessarily built to protect her as a victim. Jessica, on the other hand, acknowledges that she has lost her way in protecting her own son, who was reported for abuse, and finds herself feeling an unexpected relief that abuse sentences are often low. 

She could have been my mom.

Jessica's own quote, “I swear, live my life juggling everything in the cracks of everyone else's needs,” is a good description of her busy everyday life. The intense scene in the courtroom is abruptly interrupted by seven unanswered calls from her 18-year-old son, Harry. He's going to a Hawaiian party, missing the right t-shirt, and she throws herself into the search for him, afraid that he won't fit in. The drummer comes down on stage, takes on the role of Harry, and Jessica's monologue becomes a dialogue. Her work life is invaded by the needs of her family, and the same thing happens the other way around. This is mirrored in the set design, where the scenes flow seamlessly into each other. Walls are pulled back, rooms slide in and out, and suddenly we are in a fully furnished kitchen at Jessica's home. The tightly choreographed bustle of the production reflects director Justin Martin's own memories of a mother who was always on the move, “Doing fifty things at once but somehow making it look easy,” he writes in the program. I can personally relate to Martin's memory of his mother. The combination of a mother who is very busy herself, but who is also very involved in everyone's lives, is very recognizable. By creating a caring and everyday mother, the show emphasizes that abusers do not come from one type of family, but can be found in all kinds of homes. 

Brilliant direction

 I found myself childishly fantasizing about waiting outside the staff entrance of the theater in the hope of meeting the director after the performance. The performance is a rare hybrid of the symbolic, the literal, and the starkly realistic all at once. In one scene, Jessica is horrified that her son, who is of elementary school age, has started watching porn, and uses kitchen utensils, including a giant salt shaker, to illustrate how misleading the body is portrayed there. Her son Harry, who has only binged Call of Duty videos on Youtube, finds the whole thing deeply embarrassing. The scene is realistic with tangible details like clutter drawers and small things from our own lives. Later in the play, Jessica tries to recreate the intense rock scene from the beginning, but spends the entire scene fixing a microphone stand that won't stand. The action slides from realistic to symbolic, with the stand becoming an image of it unraveling around her. The performance has not committed itself to one expression, but rather a feeling of being inside Jessica's head.

Burningly topical

An obvious downward spiral underlies Inter Alia . The play never questions Harry's guilt and primarily focuses on the mother in all of this. For me, the play was thought-provoking, because it is so easy to blame upbringing when you read about similar cases in the newspaper. In Inter Alia , Miller depicts a mother who has done the best she can given her circumstances and still "gets the cat in the bag". There is not necessarily an equation between good upbringing and humanity because there are so many other factors that shape a person. When Jessica logs on to her son's computer in disbelief, because she does not believe it can be true, she uncovers crude chat groups where her friends share nude photos of drunk girls at parties. This is just the tip of the iceberg in a secret world that exists between "the boys". Miller's nuanced portrayal of raising boys is extremely relevant.