Prima Facie
Harold Pinter Theatre, London

Women playing lead roles in London over the next seven months must be suffering collective depression. Unless the acting equivalent of what astronomers call a hypergiant of a star is born before 31 December, the 2022 theatre awards have already gone to Jodie Comer.

Prima Facie is the testimony of Tessa Ensler, QC, a defence barrister specialising in defending men accused of rape: she confides the sly tricks of finding the holes in accounts of traumatised women that might give a jury reasonable doubt.