{"id":846963,"date":"2026-09-14T01:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/846963\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T01:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:32:11","slug":"prima-facie-review-cynthia-erivo-takes-on-one-woman-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/846963\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Prima Facie’ Review: Cynthia Erivo Takes on One-Woman Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

When James Hilton\u2019s 1941 novel \u201cRandom Harvest\u201d came to the big screen, just one year later, it was not the same. \u201cRandom Harvest,\u201d the novel, concludes with a revelation that two characters \u2014 one the protagonist knew before he lost his memory, another he met only afterwards \u2014 had been the same person all along. <\/p>\n

The shocking twist was possible in prose, where the audience couldn\u2019t see the person\u2019s face and could share, in an oblique way, the hero\u2019s obliviousness. But when \u201cRandom Harvest\u201d became a movie, starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, there was no hiding it. The whole film had to be dramatically restructured around the audience seeing and knowing what the protagonist doesn\u2019t. It was different, but it still mostly worked. Mostly.<\/p>\n

Suzie Miller\u2019s 2019 one-woman play \u201cPrima Facie\u201d also makes a complicated transition to the silver screen. There aren\u2019t any last-minute revelations to ruin, but the medium of live theater and the specific, powerful choice to frame the story from the protagonist\u2019s perspective, with no other context, amplified the theatrical production\u2019s vital message about believing victims of sexual assault even when there\u2019s no other evidence. Now it\u2019s on the big screen, where the immediacy and dynamism and fragility of its purely subjective framework has been altered, because as soon as other actors enter the scene, the story plays more like objective truth. \u201cPrima Facie\u201d may still be told from the protagonist\u2019s perspective but now there are witnesses \u2014 you, me and everyone else in the audience.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Anthony\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Cynthia Erivo<\/a> plays Tessa, a brilliant barrister and a rising star. She believes in the law. She believes even when the law protects terrible people, because the accused deserve the best defense possible. Tessa spends a lot of her time defending men accused of sexual assault, making vulnerable women sound confused and unreliable on the stand, as though any inconsistent detail while describing a violent, traumatic event is proof that a crime never happened, or at least that it was all just a misunderstanding. And she defends that way because that\u2019s the law.<\/p>\n

Tessa views trials as high-pressure, high stakes games, and herself as a winner. After all, barristers don\u2019t say they lost a case, they say they \u201ccame in second.\u201d She\u2019s in a field where she\u2019s not just respected but impressive, with a lightning-fast mind and nerves of steel. She\u2019s short-listed for a major award, she\u2019s just been offered a lucrative job with an important firm and she\u2019s sleeping with another promising young barrister, Julian (Daniel Ings, \u201cA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms\u201d).<\/p>\n

Susanna White (\u201cAndor\u201d) directs \u201cPrima Facie.\u201d She pulls slightly back from the play\u2019s fast-paced presentation, giving the story and characters \u2014 plural, now \u2014 space to breathe. \u201cPrima Facie,\u201d the film, invites an audience into Tessa\u2019s actual world, not just her perspective. And although it\u2019s presented through crisp imagery and skillful performances, this decaffeinated pacing has the effect of telegraphing the plot, which makes White\u2019s film come across, at least a little, like a cautionary tale about Tessa\u2019s hubris.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Mahershala\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

A night of drinking and, at first, consensual sex descends into horror. Julian forces himself on Tessa, and she finds herself suddenly within the same system whose biases she herself has exploited. She makes the same choices that have ruined other women\u2019s chances of being taken seriously in court, like showering evidence away afterwards. It is easy to judge people going through a crisis from a distance. Tessa\u2019s experience is brutal and life-altering and it feels that way, but now we\u2019re hyperaware of the story\u2019s construction and the point it builds to. We\u2019re not swept up in a conversation with a person who is, perhaps, best described as a force of nature. We\u2019re watching her story unfold from the outside from the calculating perspective of a filmmaker making tricky decisions about the material.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrima Facie\u201d is fascinating as a case study about those difficult, complex adaptation choices. The film technically tells the same story as the play but dramatically alters the way it\u2019s processed. White\u2019s film is no less devastating for its changes, but they do simplify some of the material\u2019s complexities. The play treats the audience like a jury; the film treats us like a witness. The message that it\u2019s important to believe women takes on a different dimension when we actually share Tessa\u2019s experiences, and the film\u2019s conclusion \u2014 which has a welcome, albeit blunt new element of hope \u2014 lands differently. Not necessarily worse, but very, very differently.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Misty\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Jodie Comer won awards for her performance in \u201cPrima Facie\u201d on the West End and Broadway. Now Cynthia Erivo brings an extremely different energy to Tessa. Her version comports herself with reserved dignity amongst her peers, playing the game inside and outside the courtroom. Miller\u2019s play incorporated class into the narrative: Tessa came from a working class family in a poor neighborhood, and hides this fact from her colleagues, most of whom arrived in the same place through privilege, not only skill. The film adds the context of race to this conversation; although Miller\u2019s screenplay doesn\u2019t dig deeply into this new part of the narrative, Erivo\u2019s layered performance and powerful supporting turns by Noma Dumezweni and Toheeb Jimo, playing her mother and brother, effectively convey these complexities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a dignified production. White directs \u201cPrima Facie\u201d with a sharp focus on the story\u2019s themes, carefully manipulating the cold visual palette to create converse images of security and instability, Tessa\u2019s life before and her life after. The performances are admirable and strum meaningful chords. That the film doesn\u2019t have the same impact as the play was a given, and probably unavoidable. Comparing it to the play is also unavoidable, and possibly not wholly fair, but it\u2019s hard to ignore that \u201cPrima Facie\u201d in its original form is an emotional lightning strike and this film is more like thunder.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When James Hilton\u2019s 1941 novel \u201cRandom Harvest\u201d came to the big screen, just one year later, it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[106479,88,206,358318,11120,358319,46686,56692],"class_list":["post-846963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cynthia-erivo","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-prima-facie","tag-susanna-white","tag-suzie-miller","tag-tiff","tag-toronto-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}