Rosamund Pike is seriously good in Inter Alia

Inter Alia
Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London, until September 13

Decades after the QC John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey, Suzie Miller, who also made her living in the legal profession, is providing a useful service in creating female legal eagles.

The Australian lawyer-turned-playwright wrote a great angst-ridden barrister for Jodie Comer to play a few years ago in Prima Facie. Now she’s created a great angst-ridden judge for Rosamund Pike to play in Inter Alia.

The idea of the latest one is simple: what happens when a judge who has always taken a hard line on rapists finds her own son accused of the crime? It takes a while to get going but soon it’s tackling interesting topical issues like toxic male influencers and a generation that has never really been properly shielded from the pernicious influence of violent online porn.

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Justin Martin – who directed Prima Facie – ensures the proceedings go at a brisk pace and Pike is on great form. Best-known for films like Gone Girl and Saltburn, she’s a serious stage actress who has acquitted herself well in earlier plays such as Madame de Sade and Hitchcock Blonde and is very much at home on the National’s boards.

There are fine turns, too, from Jasper Talbot as her son and Jamie Glover as her put-upon husband.

Of course playwrights should write about what they know, but after this, Prima Facie and the earlier Reasonable Doubt, I’d like to see the talented Miller try her hand at characters who are not so closely involved in the legal system next time around. As to whether there is any appetite for another legal drama from her, for me the jury is definitely out.