Jodie Comer, famous for her work on the British TV series “Killing Eve,” offers up a stunning performance in the play “Prima Facie,” a taut and gripping legal thriller by Suzie Miller that offers compelling evidence on how to forge a solo show that can blow an audience away on Broadway.
Lesson one: Cast an empathetic actor capable of revealing multiple colors and emotions, at once capable of driving the narrative forward but also deeply vulnerable to what befalls her character.
Comer, who also starred in this show in London to great and thoroughly justified acclaim, is that actor. Her demonstrable range is utterly formidable.
Lesson two: Purloin the structure of a procedural, which is the television genre people watch the most, but then ensure that the work also touches deeper issues.
In this case, Broadway has a show about a highly successful criminal defense lawyer in her early 30s who specializes in defending those accused of sexual assault. She has both bought into and benefits from a system created by establishment men, that also is driven by which side can tell the best story.
Poke a hole in the prosecutor’s narrative and the guy goes free. Lead the victim into a carefully laid trap and the guy goes free. Gently sew in even a modicum of doubt and the guy goes free.
And the victim then has to pick up the pieces of her life.
This is the system, Comer’s character Tessa tells herself. Doing my job as a barrister. Moving on up from my working-class origins. Nothing personal. Until it becomes deeply personal, which is what this show is all about.
Lesson three: A solo show does not have to be theatrically dull.
This one is a visual tour de force and the Australian-born director Justin Martin uses Miriam Buether’s sophisticated design, and Ben and Max Ringham’s daring sonic underscoring as Comer’s co-stars. Crucially, all of the technical elements in this show at the John Golden Theatre are time-bound, shifting through space and moving to the very same rhythms as Comer herself. And if you believe that great Broadway lighting can create tension and suspense all by itself, Natasha Chivers’ lighting makes that case for you.
This is an intensely physical production, one that deserves to stand out in a season where Broadway is offering up elsewhere a bunch of visually challenged shows featuring star actors sitting in chairs or at tables.
In total contrast, Comer thrashes around all over the stage, as her character roars with ambition and dynamically chases demons within and without. Truly, her work here is a sight to behold. Broadway will want her back. And fast.
Miller was once a human-rights lawyer in Australia before she moved to London and pursued a writing career, reportedly with the late Edward Albee’s encouragement, and thus the show has its legal ducks sufficiently in a row to appease any law school types who happen to be in the house.
Is this a great play? Well, it’s true that you see the end coming some minutes before it arrives, and it’s a fair criticism to say that the play is more confident about what it doesn’t like in the system it is critiquing than in how it would solve that challenge of due process.
There’s an implication here that the state should not carry so big a burden when it comes to offering air-tight proof, but there’s another side to that issue, of course. That’s what you hope Miller, through her Tessa, will deeply wrestle with in the very final minutes of the play, but those concluding moments lack some of the rich clarity and complexity of all that has gone before.
Still, that will worry few in this audience and, in the end, it’s a minor quibble. “Prima Facie” manages to be both political and commercially viable theater, a rare feat these days, and one achieved here through the quality of this gifted actor, the talent and craft of the writer and the rich layering of experiential tension in the direction.
A formidable Broadway attraction, indeed. Limited run, by the way.
At the John Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th St., New York; primafacieplay.com
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.