Inter Alia: Rosamund Pike and the Beautiful, Terrifying Myth of Having It All
A few weeks ago, Rosamund Pike did something wonderfully, effortlessly cool: at the curtain call, she called out Wyndham’s Theatre audience members whose glowing phone screens were distracting the cast. “When I feel that and see it, it’s hard.” said the Gone Girl star “I just wanted to say for anyone going to the theatre, it’s a huge thing that we’re trying to give you. I am trying to tell you a story, and I’m feeling you, and I hope you’re feeling me too”.
It takes a rare mix of smarts and unshakeable confidence to speak up in the name of art, artist and respectful audience members but it also perfectly mirrors the hyper-vigilance of the woman Pike plays every night. In Susie Miller’s new play Inter Alia, currently running at Wyndham’s Theatre until June 20, Pike is on an absolute tour de force. It is a breathless, physically and mentally demanding marathon of a performance that leaves you wondering how she still has the oxygen to hit her marks. Originated at the National Theatre, now concluding its West End run, the production is set to transfer to the NT’s digital library – and with that, opening doors to this exhilarating piece of theater for global audiences.
Playwright Susie Miller, who skyrocketed to fame with the Olivier Award-winning Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer, has returned with another blistering look at our flawed justice system. Prima Facie tackled legal trauma from the perspective of an advocate who becomes a victim – a show Jodie Comer brilliantly reprised for a UK and Ireland tour earlier this year. And if more than rumours are true, Miller will deliver the final installment of this thematic trilogy soon!
Anyways, the second play in line, Inter Alia flips the lens entirely. It premiered as a massive success at London’s National Theatre in 2025, a run the Mail on Sunday aptly crowned “A smash hit”. Now in its West End season, the play proves to be what the Radio Times calls “A raw, nuanced must-see”.
The title itself is an adverb meaning “among other things,” which serves as the structural heartbeat of the entire play. Pike plays Jessica Parks, a prestigious, razor-sharp London Crown Court judge who is fiercely determined to reform a system she knows is deeply broken. But Jessica’s career doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it exists inter alia, constantly balanced against motherhood, friendships, and the crushing societal expectation of “having it all.” Sounds familiar? I’m not surprised!
The play runs for nearly two hours with absolutely no intermission – a deliberate artistic choice by Miller and director Justin Martin. We are forced to endure this mad sprint alongside Jessica because she quite literally never has a single moment to stop, pause, breathe or just change her clothes without needing to run and prep meals, study court cases, or take his son to the playground.
In a recent interview after the West End opening, Pike confessed that during the early nights back at the NT, she seriously doubted whether she could truly navigate the complex, moving pieces of this abstract play or not. Watching her now, those doubts seem impossible. Returning to the stage after a 16-year hiatus – having last performed in Ibsen classics like Hedda Gabler – Pike brings a stunning gravity to the role. It is a life that somewhat mirrors her own multi-layered reality as an artist, mother, and entrepreneur co-running the company Primitive Streak with her husband Robbie, alongside her solo wellness app venture, Illuminate, which explores deeper states of consciousness and meditation.
The first half of Inter Alia is an abstract, non-linear character study that lives inside Jessica’s memories and hyper-vigilent headspace. Director Justin Martin establishes this brilliantly in the opening sequence: a live rock band dominates the stage as Jessica rises from the lower ranks like a literal rock star in smoke and saturated lighting. Holding a microphone, she breaks the fourth wall, commanding the audience to listen to her narrate a court case while simultaneously participating in it. It is a thrilling re-imagination of a classic performative tool, carrying the same gripping charm as Kevin Spacey’s direct-to-camera monologues in the House of Cards era. Pike handles even the most demanding scenes with natural ease, flashing comedic timing in-between the play’s darker, weightier moments.
As the production shifts into its more narrative-driven second half, a shocking event blows up Jessica’s finely calibrated family life. Here, the play transforms into what Broadway World called a “Thought-provoking and slightly terrifying” exploration of domestic friction. We watch her home life get into deep turmoil alongside her husband Michael, played with marvelous ease and warmth by Jamie Glover, and their 18-year-old son, Harry. The domestic politics are agonizingly real. Jessica reveals the quiet humiliation of shrinking herself at home to appease Michael, a barrister who never made judge and attributes her rapid career advancement to a corporate “quota system” rather than his wife’s talent and determination. Ugh!
Let’s see what else makes this play relatable! Well, Miller populates her text with hilarious, deeply relatable everyday failures: Jess accidentally over-frying dinner fish until it turns to pure carbon in the oven, or desperately trying to coordinate a dinner party for 16 while her husband’s sole responsibility is buying cheese – which he ends up ordering online. Ugh!
Inter Alia also captures the exhausting modern whirlwind where women constantly feel like they are running late, falling behind on their to-do lists, and failing simultaneously as professionals, mothers, and wives. Triple Ugh!
The themes of modern teenage pressures and peer social media dynamics brings to mind the brilliant tension of last year’s hit TV series Adolescence, forcing us to think about our social responsibility and how we can lower the collective pressure on children and ourselves.
By the time the play reaches its gut-wrenching climax, a recurring memory of Jess losing sight of her son in a playground as a four-year-old because she took a work call comes back around with devastating, layered relevance. Frankly, I couldn’t stop crying. It is a breathtakingly sad and lyrical finale. Miller’s background as a former lawyer shines through a script that moves way beyond didactic jargon, resulting in an incredibly human, moral triumph about boundaries, principles, and the spaces we carve out to simply love, live and be still.
~ by Dora Endre ~
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