Prima Facie

Tessa Ensler loves her job. She’s worked her way up from a working-class background to being a top criminal defence barrister at the top of her game: prosecuting, cross-examining and winning in the courtroom with her quick wit and intelligence. She fights to defend those pleading not guilty – including securing freedom for men accused of rape and sexual assault. Innocent until proven guilty is, after all, the bedrock of human rights.

An unexpected event forces Tessa to confront the very system she has spent her life believing in and working within. This is a system where the lines of patriarchal power and burden of proof are not set up to accommodate the lived experience of sexual assault survivors.

Acclaimed Olivier and Tony award-winning play, Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie, is an unforgettable story and one-woman tour de force. It is an interrogation of the legal system itself. It asks us whether there is room in that system for emotion and experience.

Prima Facie was first produced by Griffin Theatre Company in May 2019 at the SBW Stables Theatre, followed by the award-winning 2022 West End premiere at the Harold Pinter Theatre, which then travelled to the Golden Theatre on Broadway in 2023.

Directed by Kiwi acting royalty Michael Hurst and performed by Cassandra Woodhouse, NZ Theatre Company is honoured to bring Prima Facie to the stage.

This one final Auckland performance continues the call to action that this story is demanding worldwide: “Somewhere. Sometime. Somehow. Something has to change.”

“It’s sublime storytelling from a sublime storyteller, shaped by a theatre genius, and it’s for us. A gift without ego. ”
— Lexie Matheson