Rosamund Pike stars in Inter Alia at National Theatre

Like its predecessor, which provided a meaty role for Jodie Comer, it explores the precarious position of women in the legal profession and a system that’s inadequate for prosecuting sexual assault.

If Comer’s character was a defence Barrister adept at skewering rape victims’ testimony, Pike’s Jess is a feminist judge using her power and soft skills to slap down swaggering male silks and ease the women’s court experience.

Jasper Talbot as Harry and Jamie Glover as Michael in Inter Alia at The National Theatre. (Image: Manuel Harlan) She’s also a mother, and Miller’s script is sharply funny about the guilt and expectations on career women to still do the emotional and practical heavy lifting at home.

Cherie Blair – also a judge – once spoke of juggling balls, and Pike darts around Miriam Buether’s multi-cupboard kitchen set like a manic conjurer pulling out a fish to salt for a dinner party, a sexy evening dress, and an iron to press son Harry’s shirt for a party.

Justin Martin directs this near monologue at hectic speed to a soundtrack of crashing guitar and drums, with Pike deftly switching from bewigged judge in Chambers to frenetic Karaoke night to rubber-gloved domesticity in the exhausting multi-tasking of being wife, mother, friend and colleague “in the cracks of everyone else’s lives.”

Rosamund Pike plays Jess a judge and multi-tasking mother in Inter Alia by Susie Miller. (Image: Manuel Harlan) There’s humour, including an excruciating porn chat, but like Prima Facie it’s personal experiences that disrupt professional certainties. 

Jess is careful to stroke husband Michael’s (Jamie Glover) ego as a QC yet not a judge, but it’s her vulnerability as a mother prepared to compromise her ideals to protect Jasper Talbot’s sensitive, loping teenager that brings her down.

Raising topical themes about peer pressure and the manosphere, you can see the twist coming a mile off, and if it plays out with melodramatic intensity, it’s nevertheless gripping as the men in Jess’ life speak their own truths.

Early on, Buether’s domestic setting cracks open to reveal a darkened woodland play area where toddler Harry gets lost. It’s a literal and metaphorical hinterland – where Jess will later again tear around desperately calling his name.

She’s haunted by Harry’s yellow coat and his pre-pubescent 10-year-old incarnation. If Pike as the quipping, sardonic, karaoke slaying Jess sometimes seems like a confection, in her poignant longing for a time when she could shield her boy from terrors and bullies she feels gut-punchingly real.

Inter Alia runs at The National Theatre until September 13.