With heavy hearts, Griffin Theatre Company has announced that Prima Facie by Suzie Miller will no longer be presented as part of our 2020 Season. If you’ve purchased tickets to Prima Facie, we’d appreciate it if you took the time to look at the show’s Ticket Options.
Winner of the 2018 Griffin Award and fresh off a sold-out season at the Stables, Prima Facie is an indictment of the Australian legal system’s failure to provide reliable pathways to justice for women in rape, sexual assault or harassment cases. It’s a work of fiction, but one that could have been ripped from the headlines of any paper, any day of the week, so common you could cry.
Sheridan Harbridge stars as Tessa—a criminal lawyer at the top of her game who knows the law permits no room for emotion.
To win, you just need to believe in the rules. And Tessa loves to win, even when defending clients accused of sexual assault. Her court-ordained duty trumps her feminism. But when she finds herself on the other side of the bar, Tessa is forced into the shadows of doubt she’s so ruthlessly cast over other women.
Turning Sydney’s courts of law into a different kind of stage, Suzie Miller’s (Sunset Strip, Caress/Ache) taut, rapid-fire and gripping one-woman show exposes the shortcomings of a patriarchal justice system where it’s her word against his.
Maybe we need a new system.
Venue: Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre
Content Warning
This production contains adult themes and descriptions of sexual violence. If you have questions regarding the content of the play please contact our Box Office.
NSW Rape Crisis 1800 424 017 (24/7)
Sexual Assault Counselling Australia 1800 211 028
(8am – 11pm, Mon – Fri)
sexualassaultcounselling.org.au
Director Lee Lewis
Designer Renée Mulder
Lighting Designer Trent Suidgeest
Composer & Sound Designer Paul Charlier
Stage Manager Khym Scott
With Sheridan Harbridge
Venue
Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre
Opening Night 2 September
Season 3 – 12 September
Performance Times
Monday 7 September 6.30pm
Tuesday – Friday 7.30 pm
Saturday 2pm & 7.30 pm
Schools Performances
Friday 4 & Wednesday 9 September 11am
Please book for Schools Performances via Seymour Centre
Post-show Q&A
Following the Monday 7 September performance, Professor Rita Shackel (Professor of Law & Ethics and Co-Director, Sydney Institute of Criminology) will lead a Q&A discussing the issues raised in Prima Facie. She will be joined by playwright Suzie Miller and Andrew Dyer (Colin Phegan Lecturer and Deputy Director, Sydney Institute of Criminology).
Run Time
Approximately 100 minutes without interval
Subscription Add On
| Full | $56 |
| Senior, Preview | $46 |
| Concession | $42 |
| Under 35 | $36 |
Single Tickets
| Full | $62 |
| Senior, Preview, Groups 8+ | $52 |
| Concession | $46 |
| Under 35 | $38 |
| School Group* | $30 |
| Monday Rush | $20 |
*School Group bookings for Schools Performances via Seymour Centre from 14 October 2019.
Transaction fees of $4 for online bookings and $6 for phone bookings apply.
By purchasing from Griffin Theatre Company you are agreeing to be bound by these terms and conditions.
Production Patron
The Girgensohn Foundation
Supported by
Photography by Brett Boardman.
Prima Facie | Meet the Team
Prima Facie | Meet the Writer
“Prima Facie gives a platform for a woman to speak her truth, asking us to look beyond first impressions and to dig deeper into the very structures and procedures that embed underlying injustices. This is an urgent and compelling work: one that should be as widely seen for its craft, just as much as its subject matter should be better understood by our politicians, lawmakers and general public. Run, don’t walk.” ★★★★★ Debbie Zhou, Time Out
“The power of Miller’s script finds its match in both performer and production. Sheridan Harbridge is open, raw and technically impressive as Tessa, offering up a perfectly calibrated performance full of emotional truth. It’s one that also registers as deeply generous, almost attentive, as if the actor is extending one hand to the audience at the play’s most bruising moments. She is skillfully directed by Lee Lewis, whose intelligent production handles the play’s subject matter and tonal shifts with supreme finesse.” ★★★★1/2 Justin Nguyen, Limelight
“Sheridan Harbridge is superb as Tessa. Combative, controlled and clear-sighted in the first half, her decimation in the second is all the more gut-wrenching in this intense production directed by Lee Lewis.” ★★★★ Joyce Morgan, Sydney Morning Herald
“Miller’s writing is sharp, urgently precise, and yet still evokes beauty; it’s a steely play overlaid with delicate, insightful emotional work. In the hands of Sheridan Harbridge, a performer who invites you into her characters’ inner life without hesitation, it soars… the play is a living document, a map for change. It’s theatre that holds our hands and says: there could be justice for those one in three. We can change the law.” ★★★★ Cassie Tongue, Audrey Journal
“An astonishingly rich and refined work…rarely has a standing ovation at curtain call felt so natural.” ★★★★★ Veronica Hannon, Theatre Now
“Harbridge is magnificent as she portrays a confident woman at the top of her professional game, one who is physically and emotional humiliated but determined to rise above the gender and legal odds stacked against her…She never falters in delivering the grit and broad spectrum of emotions required.” ★★★★ Steve Dow, Australian Book Review
“Miller is precise and thorough, in her careful storytelling. She engages our hearts and minds, for a stirring theatrical experience, perfectly suited to our current climate of #MeToo heightened social consciousness…Actor Sheridan Harbridge holds us captive for the entire 100 minutes, of her spellbinding one-woman show. It is an extraordinary achievement.” Suzy Wrong, SuzyGoesSee
“This is not a plea, and it is more forceful than a call-to-arms. It is a voice of steely reckoning that contains within its very timbre the rage of being a woman.”
“What gets Sheridan Harbridge through this performance? Hearts are surely not designed for such shattering…I fully expected to be wreckage by the end of this show as I experienced its building to an apogee of blistering indictment but instead, I came away energised by the power of theatre to respond to systemic injustice.” Judith Greenaway, Reviews by Judith
@griffintheatre