Sydney Reviews

At the commencement of Consent, Nina Raine’s coruscating comment on gender politics, the set is littered with packing boxes. As audiences discover over the following two hours, there’s a lot to unpack.

Kitty, and Edward, have recently become parents and have moved into a new home, modern, austere, but with Edward determined to place an obscure antique light fitting.

They are hosting a “wetting of the head” of their infant, Leo, with friends and colleagues, Jake and Rachel. After a barrage of witty chit chat about children and the notion of godparents, the conversation moves on to work.

Edward, Jake and Rachel are all lawyers; Jake is working on a rape case. Rachel is currently defending someone accused of murdering a girlfriend. Edward is also working defence on a rape case, and he takes his friends through the details. Another of their friends, Tim, is prosecuting counsel in the same case.

The play cuts briefly to the courtroom where the plaintiff, Gayle, is subjected to a clearly unfair, skewered cross examination that practically makes the victim responsible for the event. By clever manipulation, white privileged male Edward carves up underprivileged female Gayle.

Edward is the embodiment of the entitled entity. Past indiscretions and infidelities are masculine rights, and, of course, must be forgiven by wife and mother of his child, Kitty.

However, forgive and forget has been put on reset, a festering sore reopened by Edward’s arrogant coercion of turning Kitty into a breeder and maintaining the status quo of male dominance in society and the law.

Director Craig Baldwin guides a sensational ensemble of seven: Anna Samson as Kitty, Jennifer Rani as Rachel, Nic English as Edward, Jeremy Waters as Jake, Sam O’Sullivan as Tim, Anna Skellern as Zara and Jessica Bell as Gayle, as they take the sharp eyes and tongue of the script and give it even sharper teeth.

Destined to become a modern classic, Consent invokes classic texts such as Medea, The Orestes and King Lear. This play and this production weaponises words with a secure adroitness that presents not only a good ear but a shaping mind,  emotionally enlarged and morally arousing.