Consent, National Theatre, review - thrilling revenge drama

Rape is such a serious social issue that it’s hardly surprising that several recent plays have tackled it. I’m thinking of Gary Owen’s Violence and Son, James Fritz’s Four Minutes Twelve Seconds and Evan Placey’s Consensual.

And it doesn’t disappoint. Immediately we find ourselves among the comfortably well-off, the hard-working and the privileged – the metropolitan elite. Thirtysomething friends Edward and Jake are barristers, and they are celebrating the birth of a new baby to Edward and Kitty (Maxwell Martin). Jake and his wife Rachel, another lawyer, are their oldest friends, and life looks sweet. They also know the single Tim, yet another lawyer, and Zara, an actor. When Edward and Tim take up briefs on opposite sides in a rape case, the relationships of all involved come under strain.

The legal system cannot be guaranteed to help the victimThe case itself concerns Gayle, a working-class woman who has clearly been abused and who is too angry to care about the arcane correctness of legal procedure. She just wants justice. Maybe even revenge. Like a Fury from an ancient Greek tragedy, her anguish is a ragged howl from the night, a pitiless cry of pain and rage. But if the legal system cannot be guaranteed to help her, what about its effects on the lawyers who make it work? When Rachel accuses Jake of having an affair, sexual politics is no longer just a case to be argued over in court – it comes barging into this couple’s nice middle-class home.

Raine’s compelling play features some excellent scenes that explain the mechanics of justice, how the adversarial system of confrontational cross-examination in court depends on cool techniques which can only be mastered by the exceptionally gifted. Who tend to think of them as a game. Where only winning matters. But she also delves deep into the troubled psyches of those lawyers and their spouses. At one point, a sexual encounter is dissected with a logical scalpel that is twisted by two opposing points of view. The fate of Gayle matters much less to them than the disruptions caused by adultery in nice middle-class families. And when Zara introduces the subject of acting in Ancient Greek tragedy, the key themes of the play – betrayal, punishment and forgiveness – heave into view. As Tim describes tragedy as “two opposing characters holding two relative but mutually destructive truths” you just know that things will end badly.Together, Raine and Michell find a really good balance between cerebral discussions and comic relief. Whenever the word rape explodes on the stage, there’s always a joke close behind to soften the effects of the shrapnel. Like Patrick Marber’s Closer, which Consent occasionally resembles, the main tussle here is over love, and the organ that gets most damaged is not the genitals (despite some references to stretched vaginas, blackened penises, intimate warts and STDs), but the human heart. And as the mind games twirl, and the emotions of vengeance twist and turn, all of the characters are revealed as equally troubled. And none of them can really get justice, not even of the poetic kind.

Powerfully written, compelling to watch, and both entertaining and thought-provoking, Consent is only slightly marred by having almost too much content, almost too much to say. Michell’s excellent cast is led by Maxwell Martin, who conveys deep feeling even when she’s at her most skittish, and Ben Chaplin, who was so convincing as the slippery character in the BBC’s recent Apple Tree Yard and here plays Kitty’s husband Edward. Adam James (pictured above right with Chaplin) plays his friend Jake, and Pip Carter is Tim. Priyanga Burford’s Rachel and Daisy Haggard’s Zara are slightly underwritten, while Heather Craney’s Gayle is more symbolic than real. In a smooth-running production, co-sponsored by Out of Joint, set designer Hildegard Bechtler creates little concertos with an array of lights and lampshades, while the Dorfman’s subterranean lifts work overtime in the smooth scene changes. So what’s the verdict? Guilty of being a good night out.

• Consent is at the National Theatre until 17 May
• Read more theatre reviews on theartsdesk

@AleksSierz