Turn to your left, turn to your right. One in three law students won’t make it. Turn to your left, turn to your right. One in three women will be sexually assaulted. Statistics, often difficult to make sense of on the page, come to awful life for Tessa in Suzie Miller’s bracing one-woman show Prima Facie.

Having beat the odds to become a brilliant criminal defence lawyer, Tessa’s faith in the law’s ability to deliver justice for rape victims comes tumbling down when she herself is raped.

Sheridan Harbridge in Griffin Theatre Company’s Prima Facie. Photo © Brett Boardman

Winner of the 2018 Griffin Award and now receiving its premiere, Miller’s play is one of passionate moral intelligence. It confronts head-on the shortcomings of a legal system that, as its character decries, did not even recognise marital rape as a crime until relatively recently.

Having practised both criminal and human rights law, Miller brings that considerable insight to bear in this gripping look at how women are routinely underserved by a legal system rooted in the concept of innocent until proven guilty. She makes clear that is it the victims of sexual assault who must ultimately...