This is a marvellous play presented by an extraordinary team.
As the title suggests, it’s based on crimes of sexuality, both what is illegal and what is too little or too large for legislation. (The law is a net we drag through the ocean of reality; the small slips through the mesh, the large tears it asunder.)
Nina Raine’s Consent is built on serious conflict. Not the type of conflict where two characters fight for the same thing, whatever that random thing is: the farm, the man, or dominance. No, it’s conflict born of those unfathomable fissures in the human condition. Sometimes, when we’re particularly brave or clear-eyed, we acknowledge that our deepest held values might be at odds with each other; that it might not all fit together. (It’s sort of the Gödel’s Theorem of values.) It’s what Hegel expressed in the line “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” In its reference to the great Greek tragedies, Consent makes explicit this type of tension.
But this is a contemporary play set in modern London. It contrasts the need for a legal system with the unavoidable limitations of a legal system. And, in asking which way justice, the play presents the battle between empathy and logic.
It interrogates empathy’s disturbing whole-heartedness. Sure, we must listen to the victim, but as is said in the play (I paraphrase) If you’re hurt enough, you become stupid.
Also explored is the troubling relationship between the valorisation of empathy and the desire to make others suffer the same pain we have felt. Empathy and revenge are perhaps closer cousins than one might imagine.
But rationality won’t necessarily save us either. The conflict between the letter of the law and its spirit is age-old, and legal logic can be especially pedantic. As one character points out, if you were to come across that sort of pedantry outside a courtroom, you’d naturally assume the speaker was disingenuous.
The play also asks us to consider the difference between I’m sorry and I apologise, and to compare repentance with forgiveness. This isn’t semantics, it’s a genuine gift for the soul.
The play’s construction emphasises the inevitability of conflicting perspectives, with the stage sometimes split into two parallel and contrasting scenes. Likewise, the characterisation asserts complexity. Characters we initially despise will shine with unexpected goodness, and vice versa.
And under Craig Baldwin’s direction, the absolutely terrific ensemble present beautifully rich performances. Anna Samson’s Kitty is magnificent, offering both real heart and a glimpse into its darkest chambers. Nic English, playing her husband Edward, gives a superb portrait of cold intellectual arrogance and the emotional confusion it hides. Jeremy Waters’ Jake is wonderfully narcissistic, until he is gloriously, and so truthfully, not. Jennifer Rani, playing his wife Rachel, portrays magnificently that type of justified resentment that arrests moral growth. Anna Skellern’s Zara positively floats with exuberance until it’s punctured by betrayal. Sam O’Sullivan’s Tim is an eminently watchable combination of uncertainty and strength, a performance that captures the physicality of doubt and the verbal virtuosity of conviction. Jessica Bell as Gayle is a splendid working class counterpoint to all these privileged professionals, But Gayle is also a victim of rape, and Bell encapsulates perfectly both her incandescent rage and aching vulnerability.
Life is hard. Life is complex. Maybe we can’t make it all fit together. But we’re in it together. Consent is a deeply humane play, brilliantly presented.
Paul Gilchrist
Consent by Nina Raine
At Seymour Centre until 24 June
presented by Outhouse Theater Co
Theatre Red 
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