You might expect times to have changed since Barrie Keeffe’s play Sus, which explores the deep-set systemic racism within the Metropolitan police and premiered over 40 years ago. But with Black people still nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts, and the recent resignation of the Met Police’s commissioner Cressida Dick after being accused by the London mayor of failing to deal with misogyny and racism in the force, it feels as insidious as ever.
Set on the eve of Thatcher’s landslide victory in 1979, Sus zooms in on a police questioning room, where an unemployed father of three, Delroy (Stedroy Cabey) has been bought in for interrogation. Initially believing he is there under Sus (suspected person) laws, it eventually unravels that he is actually being accused of the murder of his pregnant wife, Georgie.
