Inter Alia

(seen at the afternoon performance on 30th July 2025)

In a recent online discussion, the monkey drew ire when pointing out that one revered television comedy person used a single template for routines, simply changing names and quirks each time but never varying the monologue's outline structure.

For much of the first half of Suzie Miller’s latest play, it feels the same. Judge Jessica Parks (Rosamund Pike) sounded exactly like Tessa Ensler in “Prima Facie” (Miller’s previous hit legal play), and had the monkey wondering if it was the same person, now elevated to the bench.

This situation also felt stale. Career woman still expected to be “mother” at home, trying to do it all without help. A billion newspaper articles, TV dramas, other plays and musicals. Tedious. We know, we sympathise, we need actual change (which won’t happen easily). 

It doesn’t make for fresh watching, just feeding a certain section of audience happy to take their drama without new insight. Which is a commercial majority, to be fair.

A sudden burst of life around 50 minutes into the 1 hour 45 sees son Harry (Jasper Talbot) accused of the offence his mother dreads most. Both parents – husband Michael (Jamie Glover) is also a top barrister – rally round and the play kicks breifly into engagingly dramatic gear.

Sadly, Miller is unable to resist the most obvious way to end the piece, self-destructively nose-diving into the ground instead of soaring over and above the field of common modern misandry. She may also want to check English sentencing guidelines for a possible inaccuracy similar to one in her previous hit play.

The performances match the text. Pike turns in a Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who impersonation – all internal monologue revelations and Frankie Howard style “oooh, I didn’t know that about myself my world” irritating moments.

Glover and Talbot are both constrained by Miller’s definition of masculinity. Two-dimensional beings with only domination as an emotion. Both cope as she dismisses lazily male bonding as something beyond her understanding, devaluing it. She also misses the irony that, by doing so, it ensnares women in exactly what she is rightly protesting about.

Director Justin Martin deals with the uneven material with some skill. A well-considered means of depicting childhood impresses, the use of “stand up comedy” microphone and Willie Williams’s video less so – the latter superfluous over-staging.

Miriam Buether is also guilty of set design crimes. Large numbers of the audience do not see the entire stage at all times thanks to her pandering to video screen space. From what the monkey could see, the high-earners kitchen is also grottily bad-taste, and the tree trunk / totem poles plain weird.

Odder still, even if stage-manager efficient, plastic tableware for the (interminable and pointless) party sequence sounds terrible. Ben and Max Ringham’s sound is always faultless, and the dead clunk of plastic is almost unintentionally hilarious if it isn’t so irritatingly incongruous.

In summary, it is another triumph for the ticket buying majority which the monkey simply couldn’t bring itself to love as much as everyone else will. Cool and efficient perspective writing, staged with integrity, a theatrical dinner-party where the home-made dishes were probably Ocado.

Not going to worry anyone, satisfying hunger, and impolite to mention at table, but knowing doing it all ‘from scratch’ could have delivered something far more interestingly personal.