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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Entertainment
Richard Lawson in Toronto

Prima Facie review – fiery one-woman play is flattened into a bland movie

Cynthia Erivo in Prima Facie
Cynthia Erivo as Tessa in Prima Facie, ‘an Olivier-winning play somehow reduced to Law & Order blandness’. Photograph: Nicola Dove/Toronto film festival

Suzie Miller’s award-winning 2019 play Prima Facie employs a familiar narrative device: a hotshot London barrister finds herself on the other side of the bar, subject to the very legal tactics she once so ruthlessly employed. Not as a defendant, but as the accuser in a rape case.

We’ve seen versions of this before – a powerful figure suddenly caught in a struggle against a system they helped perpetuate – but Miller’s play distinguishes itself by putting the onus on to one actor.

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