After Inter Alia
What if we started asking better questions?
A while ago in London, I caught the limited West End run of Inter Alia, starring Rosamund Pike at Wyndham’s Theatre. It did what the best theatre does: I left thinking about it for days.
It’s one of those plays where the author, Suzie Miller, refuses to offer the comfort of a clear villain or a tidy resolution. Instead, she exposes the invisible dynamics that shape so many heterosexual relationships: the emotional labour, the inherited roles, the assumptions nobody has bothered to question because they’ve worked well enough for the people who benefit from them.
As a woman, much of it felt painfully familiar. The endless negotiation. The constant, low-level awareness of how your actions might be interpreted. The subtle calculations that become second nature without you even noticing. Looking around the theatre, I had the impression I wasn’t alone in recognizing those moments. There was something strangely comforting about seeing experiences that so often remain invisible given shape on stage.
But what stayed with me most was thinking about the men in the audience.
The play doesn’t accuse them. It doesn’t divide its characters into good people and bad people, victims and monsters. That restraint is precisely what gives it so much power. Instead, it invites men into an experience they may never have fully considered, showing how privilege rarely feels like privilege to the person who has it. It simply feels like normal.
One of the most compelling threads follows a father who slowly begins to question the assumptions that have guided him throughout his life. He isn’t presented as a monster. He’s presented as recognizably ordinary. A loving husband. A caring father. A successful professional. And perhaps that’s what makes his journey so unsettling.
He comes to realize that being a decent man did not necessarily mean he had always behaved well. That there may have been moments when he made someone uncomfortable, crossed a boundary, or simply failed to ask questions he never imagined needed asking. Not because he intended harm, but because the rules he had inherited were incomplete.
That recognition feels far more powerful than condemnation. It doesn’t ask us to drown in guilt. It asks us to become more curious about ourselves.
What also struck me is that the play isn’t really about the absence of love. Quite the opposite. The relationships feel genuine, affectionate and believable. People continue loving each other while still living inside structures that distribute emotional responsibility unequally. That may be one of the hardest truths the play presents. Inequality doesn’t only exist inside abusive relationships. It can exist inside loving ones too.
Watching Inter Alia, I found myself thinking about the work I do. On my film sets, performers spend hours talking before a single intimate scene is filmed. They discuss boundaries, desires, fears, expectations, contraception, safer sex practices and what happens after the cameras stop rolling. They check in before, during and after every scene. Communication isn’t treated as a legal safeguard; it’s treated as part of intimacy itself.
I often wonder why we see these as professional skills rather than life skills.
For years we’ve invested enormous energy in teaching girls how to stay safe. Watch your drink. Share your location. Avoid walking home alone. Be careful. Be polite. Say no, but don’t be too harsh. Most women know that list by heart.
What if we invested that same energy in teaching boys how to communicate?
Not because they’re potential perpetrators, but because communication is something everyone deserves to learn. Curiosity instead of assumption. Learning that desire isn’t something you presume but something you discover together. Understanding that silence isn’t clarity, and that checking in isn’t awkward or unromantic. It’s part of intimacy.
And perhaps most importantly, realizing that intimacy doesn’t end when sex ends. A message the next day. Asking how someone felt. Making space for reflection. These aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signs of emotional maturity.
Consent doesn’t belong only in schools, universities, HR departments or courtrooms. It belongs around dinner tables, in conversations between parents and children, between fathers and sons, between friends, and long before anyone starts dating.
The father in Inter Alia eventually understands that men of his generation have probably made mistakes they never recognized as mistakes. The play doesn’t ask us to judge him. It asks us to imagine what might have been different if someone had taught him to ask better questions in the first place.
I left the theatre feeling something I hadn’t expected: hope.
Not because the play offers easy answers, but because it reminds us that people are capable of changing. That recognition can arrive late and still matter. That conversations we should have started decades ago can still begin today.
If a play can make an audience leave the theatre asking better questions—about love, power, responsibility and the stories we’ve inherited—then art is doing exactly what it should.