An exposing comedy drama about rape, victim blaming, sexual politics and the middle class.Â
Being a student I have access to the National Theatre Collection on the dramaonlinelibary and have been rinsing it. A few weeks ago I watched Consent, a play by Nina Raine, featuring Anna Maxwell-Martin and Adam James, is described as a “powerful, painful, funny play sifts the evidence from every side and puts justice herself in the dock”. Raine’s play, originally performed in 2017 at the Harold Pinter Theatre, exposes the personal as political as she brings the lawyers life in the courts into the home. The play begins in an upper middle class household hosting a diner party. Kitty and her lawyer husband are new parents through a victim tracking Ed down, the lawyer defending her rapist, and as rape and child custody becomes part of his relationship with Maxwell-Martin’s character, Kitty.
The question of justice is carefully played out in the first act. Gayle, a lower class rape victim, is in court justifying against a rape against her. Ed, the middle class lawyer, defends the rapist by digging up Gayle’s past of depression and the fact that she was drinking on the night of the attack as evidence, yet the rapists past assaults are not mentioned. This injustice and confusion is played out again in the second act through Ed’s marriage with Kitty as he himself is accused of rape and he uses Kitty’s post natal depression against her. Again, there is victim blaming, but this time by fellow characters and shockingly a woman. During the height of the #MeToo movement Raine exposes that not all women stood by the movement and again it is the victim’s struggle of being believed. However, Raine makes the audience’s perspective difficult with the complication of infidelity with both Ed having a histroy of it and Kitty having an affair with Ed’s colleague to get back at him. No character has the moral high ground in this play, stimulating great debates for the audience. Something I personally believe theatre should do.
The play exposes the lawyers to talk dismissively of rape in the first scene at their dinner party. The party is intruded by the rape victim. Again, the victim is treated dismissively like the comments made earlier. The audience again is challenged to debate the victims stalking and intrusion of the lawyers but the treatment and attitude the lawyers have towards rape. The theme of consent is cleverly intertwined into different parts of dialogue. Ed offers Zara another drink in act 1 and she declines and his line is “she says no but she means yes”. Very clever of Raine’s writing which exposes how when someone says no they can often be ignored…
Motherhood was also an interesting theme debated. Kitty is praised at the beginning, in fact there is a toast to her vagina for delivering the child. However Kitty does not want another child and her husband, Ed, does. In contrast, Kitty’s actress friend is desperate for children and dates lawyer Tim because of this, not because she genuinely likes him. This makes Kitty’s affair with Tim ruthless as Kitty has what Zara wants.
In previous performance experience, I have performed a scene which was a build up to an assault in Alice Birch’s [BLANK]. You want to portray the innocence of the victim right. My character was a child who thought she trusted the man she was with. The only line I said during the scene was “no” over and over while the male character ignored it. This play exposed assault and never was a joke made out of rape or sexual assault. The scene stopped before the actual assault, leaving the audience to ponder and just imagine what was going to happen to the poor girl. Raine’s play uses comedy and joking about rape as a point to expose or sexual assault. Raine’s play uses comedy and joking about rape as a point to expose societal attitudes towards rape and sexual politics. This I’d like to say was extremely effective.
I found the set very clever in this piece. The staging was in traverse with a white stage. The staging lets the audience see the characters from both sides, almost a metaphor for the play and development of how each character’s different sides are exposed. The theatre is very intimate, making sure the audience cannot escape from what the play is dealing but also echoes the intimacy of sex. There were trap doors that would bring up basic pieces of furniture such as sofas. the minimalist set allowed fore the focus on what was being said by the hypocritical and dislikable characters.
I could go on all day about this play and clever writing of Nina Raine but alas, this is it for now. If you are able to access the national theatre collection, I highly recommend this comedy drama.
The Theatre Politician 