Director: Susanna White

Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Daniel Ings, Toheeb Jimoh, Noma Dumezweni, Elliot Levey

This adaptation of Suzie Miller’s acclaimed one-woman play opens out the drama to a standard real-world setting and a full cast of characters with disappointing results. Cynthia Erivo is Tessa, Black Londoner and rising star criminal defence lawyer, who has made her name from sexual assault cases by defending the male accused. The picture clumsily announces her iconoclastic personality with a shot of her striding confidently into court with trainers visible under her black robes. In voiceover she boasts about how she skilfully zeroes in on the victim’s weaknesses. A female colleague expresses concerns to Tessa about the relish she carries out her duties. Tessa begins dating another lawyer where she works, the upper-middle class Julian (Ings). But when she is sexually assaulted she comes up against a system that she has hitherto happily upheld. The picture is strongest in the immediate aftermath of Tessa’s attack where she struggles to regain her equilibrium, before descending into a more rote drama unsubtly handled by the director. By the last act, the picture gives way completely to stagey didacticism and speechifying.

David Willoughby

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