Prima Facie
Jodie Comer in Prima Facie, image © Helen Murray
Tickets for the one-person court drama Prima Facie at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre next February went on public sale yesterday at 10am and sold out within the hour. I didn’t get a chance of the action as at the time I was … well, to be honest, I completely forgot about it. Mea culpa.
The play, written by Australian playwright Suzie Miller, premiered in 2019 with a four-week run at Sydney’s Stables Theatre where it was uber-alliteratively praised by Jade Kops in Broadway World as a ‘powerful piece of pertinent theatre’ (if it had been me, I’d have gone for (P)broke and added ‘about patriarchal power’). After several years touring Australia, Prima Facie opened at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre in 2022 where it starred Jodie Comer. A subsequent transfer to Broadway and a National Theatre Live filmed performance watched by over 1.2 million people catapulted Comer into the big time (bigger time than she already was), winning an Oliver Award and Tony Award for her portrayal of barrister Tessa Ensler.
In truth I’m only jealous of those who managed / remembered to secure tickets. And as far as I can make out, the entire 2026 UK & Ireland tour - Richmond, Dublin, Cardiff, York, Bath, Canterbury, Birmingham, Liverpool - is sold out too.
Nathan Queeley-Dennis, image © Mihaela Bodlovic
But where they all, for example, last October when Nathan Queeley-Dennis was at the Traverse with his solo show Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz. Queeley-Dennis wrote the play on his phone while working morning shifts at a Birmingham pub. It won him the prestigious Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and got glowing reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022. After that, a run at London’s Royal Court and then last autumn’s national tour including the shows at the Traverse. It was a joy, good old-fashioned story telling about the intimate relationship between a man and his barber partly told through Beyoncé lyrics, but the sea of empty seats the Friday night of the Edinburgh run was embarrassing.
Dani Arlington in Prima Facie, image © Helen Murray
One difference between the two productions is that Jodie Comer is a known TV star, notably Villanelle in Killing Eve. What would have been the effect on demand for tickets for the 2026 tour of Prima Facie if the part of Tessa Ensler had been announced as being played by Dani Arlington, the understudy to Jodie Comer during both the London and Broadway runs? A hugely talented actor in her own right, she had to learn and rehearse the 100-minute one-woman play not knowing if she was ever going to perform it. As it transpired, she was called upon at short notice only once, when Comer had difficulty breathing due to the poor air quality in New York City because of smoke from Canadian wildfires. I can’t help but feel that there might today be tickets still on sale if Dani Arlington was top of the bill, that is the power of TV.
The Citizens Theatre, Glasgow under reconstruction, 2024
Still, there’s plenty good stuff coming up at the Lyceum before next February including National Theatre of Scotland’s KELI and, if you missed Douglas Maxwell’s excellent So Young at the Traverse last August, it’s getting a second run this autumn. And after 6 years of redevelopment, a transformed Citizens Theatre in Glasgow reopens in September. Small Acts of Love about the bonds of friendship forged between the people of Lockerbie and the American relatives in the wake of the Pan Am 103 atrocity in December 1988 sounds like just what the doctor ordered in this rapidly changing world.