Review — Consent, National Theatre, 04/10/2017
“What happened to us?” The question lingers in the air, like the smoke coming off the cigarette on stage. A simple question with complicated answers remains. Much like the legal proceedings that the characters find themselves in, the play is concerned with seemingly unanswerable questions and unresolved moral complexities. Consent, a new play by Nina Raine directed by Roger Mitchell playing at the Dorfman Theatre — a part of the National Theatre, is a play concerned with the eccentricities of human nature. What starts as simple banter between two couples composed of 30-something lawyers, Rachel and Jake, and Kitty and Edward, turns into something more sinister — a scrambling balancing act of empathy and morality.
The characters drive the action of the play, keeping the audience engaged in their unveiling. Edward is stolid and solid with his morals and reasoning, Kitty is concerned with the price of emotions. When they clash, few are left unaffected. In a play that uncovers the human ability to hurt others and the desire of empathy, Consent is able to unpack the different ways a ‘good’ relationship can go wrong. Propped up against the backdrop of a rape case that both Edward and Tim, another lawyer, argue against each other on, the characters learn the cost of morality and justice. Lawyers, as Raine points out, may interpret the law differently when they apply it to themselves. Unpacking the meaning of fairness, morality, justice and guilt, the characters find themselves on a moral roundabout juggling semantics and sentiments. Raine’s mastery of language comes through her dialogue — inspired, insightful and emotionally charged all at once.
The characters are developed through their verbal and physical nuances, even something as simple as Edward saying “I apologize” instead of “I’m sorry.” We watch their evolution in stage, slowly changing into something completely different than what they started the play as. Deeply moving and inadvertently heartbreaking, the play succeeds at exposing the heart of humanity, and the contradictions that lie therein. Anna Maxwell Martin shines as Kitty opposite Ben Chaplin’s Edward, caught in arguments with Priyanga Burford’s Rachel and Adam James’ rambunctious representation of Jake.
The play succeeds in making you question on what grounds we consider things ‘fair’ and how far some people are willing to go to gain empathy. In the same vein it questions how far one is willing to go to prove they’re right, even when they know they’re wrong. The beauty of the play lies in the subtleties of the semantics, the driving arguments creating the core of the tour-de force. Consent is a night of theatre that breaks you into laughter fits and breaks your heart, all while forcing you to question the ways in which you see the world, and subsequently, each other.
