Prima Facie returns to Sydney and Melbourne in 2026, as Griffin Theatre Company presents Suzie Miller’s powerful courtroom drama exploring law, truth and perception.
On a winter evening near Walsh Bay, the sandstone edges of the harbour hold the day’s fading warmth. Inside Roslyn Packer Theatre, the hush before a performance feels deliberate, almost architectural. Seats fill gradually. Conversations soften. The atmosphere suggests anticipation not for spectacle, but for something more interior – a story that unfolds in language, in memory, in the shifting balance between certainty and doubt.
In 2026, Prima Facie returns to Australian stages with a rare sense of homecoming. Presented by Griffin Theatre Company in collaboration with Andrew Henry Presents, the production travels between Sydney and Melbourne, carrying with it a reputation forged across international audiences yet grounded in distinctly Australian terrain.
Prima Facie And The Space Of The Courtroom
Written by Australian playwright Suzie Miller, Prima Facie centres on Tessa, a criminal defence barrister whose confidence is built on precision. She trusts procedure. She believes in evidence. The courtroom, in her world, is a place where truth is assembled through disciplined argument.
Yet the play’s architecture rests not on legal mechanics alone, but on transformation. As Tessa’s perspective shifts, the language of law reveals its limits. What once appeared orderly becomes porous. Certainty gives way to ambiguity. Through a single performer’s voice, the courtroom expands beyond a physical setting into a psychological landscape shaped by memory, experience and perception.
The production returns with Sheridan Harbridge in the role of Tessa, under the direction of Lee Lewis. Their collaboration, first seen in the original staging, is marked by restraint rather than theatrical excess. The narrative unfolds through presence – the body on stage, the rhythm of speech, the attentive silence of an audience invited to listen closely.
Prima Facie In The Australian Context
Though Prima Facie has travelled widely, its return to Australian stages introduces a particular resonance. Legal frameworks, public discourse and lived experience intersect differently in each place a story is told. In Sydney, the harbour’s proximity to the theatre underscores a sense of immediacy – a reminder of how institutions and individuals coexist within shared space.
The production’s staging emphasises minimalism. Designer Renée Mulder shapes an environment that resists distraction, while lighting by Trent Suidgeest traces subtle emotional shifts rather than dramatic contrasts. Sound, composed by Paul Charlier, operates almost as an undercurrent – present, perceptible, yet never intrusive.
Together, these elements support the text without imposing interpretation. The result is a theatrical experience that privileges attention: attention to language, to silence, to the space between statement and meaning.
The Journey Of Prima Facie Across Stages
Before arriving at larger venues, Prima Facie was first produced at the SBW Stables Theatre in 2019. That origin remains embedded in the work’s scale. Even within grander auditoriums, the story retains an intimate quality, as though the audience were gathered within the confines of a chamber rather than a public venue.
In Melbourne, performances unfold at Comedy Theatre, a venue whose heritage architecture offers a different kind of enclosure. The shift between cities mirrors the play’s thematic movement between systems and individuals, between structure and lived experience.
Across both seasons, the production’s 90-minute duration without interval reinforces continuity. Time is experienced as a single arc, uninterrupted, allowing the narrative’s momentum to accumulate gradually.
Listening Within Prima Facie
What distinguishes Prima Facie is not simply its subject matter, but its attention to how stories are heard. The play explores how language attempts to contain experience, and how experience resists containment. Legal terminology, with its emphasis on proof, becomes a framework through which the fragility of certainty is revealed.
For audiences, the encounter is less about resolution than reflection. The theatre becomes a site of collective listening, where individual responses remain private yet shared in atmosphere. Breath, stillness and attention form part of the performance’s texture.
Within Sydney’s cultural landscape, where performance often intersects with public conversation, Prima Facie enters quietly yet persistently. Its presence does not demand reaction; it invites consideration.
Prima Facie And The Atmosphere Of Return
There is a particular quality to works that return after travelling widely. They carry traces of other audiences, other rooms, other interpretations. Yet in Sydney and Melbourne, Prima Facie re-enters environments shaped by the contexts that first informed it.
As winter settles over Sydney and Melbourne, evenings draw earlier, and theatre interiors hold a steady warmth against the cold. The audience’s arrival becomes part of the experience: coats folded, programmes held lightly, attention gradually aligning toward the stage.
When the performance concludes, the transition back to the city feels deliberate. Streetlights reflect across pavement. Conversations resume quietly. The story lingers not as a fixed message but as an atmosphere – a recognition of complexity that resists immediate conclusion.
In this sense, Prima Facie operates less as an event than as a threshold. It marks a moment of encounter between narrative and perception, between language and lived experience. And in the stillness that follows, the city continues – harbour tides shifting, tramlines humming, audiences dispersing into night with something newly considered, though not fully defined.
Event Details
Prima Facie
Sydney Season: From 3 June 2026
Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay
Run Time: 90 minutes (no interval)
Official Link: https://griffintheatre.com.au