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This play packs a punch. The audience sit around the sides of the stage, as in a boxing match, and, by the end, my head was spinning from the verbal and emotional sparring, the sudden turns and twists of ideas, themes, and allegiances. Nina Raine’s new play is clever, engaging, and thought provoking.
The title, Consent, appears early on to refer to a rape trial where one barrister is representing a woman who was drunk at the time of the rape, while his barrister “friend” is defending a man who has an undisclosed history of violence. In this adversarial system, justice is decided on the basis of strict procedures to demonstrate absolute fairness. This results in the barristers honing their skills in complicated legal swordplay. Meanwhile, the witness and victim are left in a state of confusion and alienation. Raine demonstrates how the legal system discourages empathy, understanding, or an interest in the nuanced truth of an event.
The barristers are also engaged in verbal sparring out of court, both with each other and with their wives and girlfriends. At the beginning, I wondered where the play was going. Is it a court room drama? Is it a domestic drama? It is clever, word sharp, and tightly staged, but I felt no immediate empathy for any of the central characters. The male barristers are clever, but cruel; the wives appear self-satisfied; can I believe the victim of the alleged rape?
The domestic drama centres around three couples, two married and one fledgling. Under the superficial, one-dimensionality of the characters, real emotions start to erupt with the disclosure of marital infidelity. We observe how the different protagonists deal with hurt and loss. The legal system may be too rigid in its quest for fairness, but what is a fair outcome when one partner in a marriage has an affair? How can the betrayed partner be compensated for the loss of a sense of who they are, who their partner is, what their future might be? Is punishment and revenge the best form of