Law in action

It’s like Raging Bull. The great Scorsese movie asks if a professional boxer can exclude violence from his family life. Nina Raine’s new play Consent puts the same question to criminal barristers. We meet four lawyers engaged in cases of varying unpleasantness who like to share a drink after a long day in court. They gossip about the more horrific behaviour of their clients with frivolous and mocking detachment. But when their personal relationships start to falter under the strains of infidelity, they’re unable to relinquish their professional expertise, and their homes become legalistic battlefields. This sounds like a small discovery but Raine turns it into a grand canvas. At her best she can create scenes that feel like eavesdropped conversation rather than hand-crafted dialogue. She writes male characters better than most male dramatists and she captures precisely the sinuous and competitive glibness of the masculine yuppie at play. Nor does she care if her characters fail the sympathy test.