TAKE A HARD-BOILED defense advocate. Pepper her with her own awareness of her skill to postulate, to strategise. Dress her in the bib and gown of the field. Endow her with an understanding of having the punching weight of a man. Of someone who had a private school education. Make her hungry to win. Harden her heart to focus on the win over the truth, the morality. And then in a sleight of hand, switch the chair she is in to the chair she confronts in her day-to-day operations. Prima Facie, featuring Danica De La Ray Jones and directed by Neil Coppen will gut you. It’s on show at the Barney Simon until 11 October 2026.

De La Rey Jones is absolutely electric performer. Alone on stage, she takes hold of the over two-hour long script and gives it every fibre of her being, every muscle in her head speaks to the text and every sinew in her soul resonates with it. You will not be able to stretch your mind a millimetre from her gaze, her narrative, and it will leave you shattered. She is Tessa Ensler, a lawyer who is climbing the professional trajectory. She has an elderly mother on the other side of the proverbial tracks, a couple of thug-life brothers and a flat in high end Sandton filled with all that a professional’s home should have. Lots of shoes.

The story is as old and as predictable as time itself. It’s as old as the first man who reckoned his woman was chattel and not really a person in her own right. You know how it will unfold as soon as Tessa’s energetic courage is revealed onstage. It’s not only about simple courage, though. It’s about the thrill of the hunt, the ability to kick back and relax with the guys after a difficult stressful day’s work. To dance. To drink. To chill.

The play takes you in the audience and assaults you with text that feels like it is printed in boldface and upper case, but it shifts and changes with the nuances of the production’s lighting. At times De La Rey Jones is hard edged and potent, at other times, she’s desperately young, fragile as spun glass. So vulnerable, you can hardly look at her. It’s an environment created by the cleavage of set and lighting that takes you from safety into deeply unsafe space, between home and work, court and police station, the nuances shift with alacrity, tightness. And it is not just your eyes that witness this.

The sound design of this piece melds music with the noise of an ECG. There are times when you are not sure if it is your own heart-beat you’re aware of, or whether it is the play’s sound that has infiltrated your senses to such an extent that it is not really Tessa Ensler’s story any more. It’s yours. It’s that of the woman sitting next to you. It’s your sister’s. Your mother’s. The hapless young women in Kempton Park.

The work contemplates how the legal structure surrounding the corrosive wound that is sexual assault is like a game, in this world. Depending on who you are and which side of the spotlight your chair fills. The focus on minutiae in legal discourse around a crime is constructed with the well-intentioned idea of thoroughly distinguishing victim from perpetrator. And yet, the psychology of trauma, the construction of society, the ‘he said, she said’, the buddies in the courtroom cheering someone on, the fallibility of the memory of a person violated, and more realities that have to do with freezing in the face of horror, all of these things make mockery of those good intentions. And the minutiae become a kind of filthy vicarious “peeping-tommery” that all the world has to become privy to, re-traumatising the one who experienced it all, in this quest to justify right from wrong. You know who will win the case.

The work is an incredible testament to the power of a story told in the right hands with the right tools. It’s a tale that doesn’t allow you be blasé about even though it is shouted at you from every proverbial street pole and every snippet of social media. Prima Facie remains fresh and sore and real and should be imperative watching. Particularly for the fledgling perpetrators that our society has a habit of enabling.

• Prima Facie is written by Suzie Miller and directed by Neil Coppen. Performed by Danica de la Rey Jones, it is produced by How Now Brown Cow Productions and presented by How Now Brown Cow in association with the Market Theatre. It features set design by Neil Coppen and Patrick Curtis, set construction by Patrick Curtis and The Baxter Theatre; lighting by Tina le Roux, costumes by Noluthando ‘Texture’ Lobese and sound by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder. It is stage managed by Erin Hrustinszky and is on stage at the Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre complex in Newtown, Johannesburg, until 11 October 2026.