Adrian Lam enters the scene with a sultry sense of calm arrogance, set at the peak of his professional power, circa 2002. Over the course of two hours, his righteousness is challenged, stripped down and laid bare over the negligence of a system that he’s taken rigorous advantage of. A case goes majestically haywire, resulting in Adrian and his cohorts sending an innocent woman off to potential life imprisonment, done unto themselves for a lack of attention, research & forethought.
A Guilty Conscience is a play on fairness, deliberately weaving around the audience’s expectations to showcase a literal conscience at odds ends with its own guilt. Played with strong, dynamic robust by Dayo Wong, Adrian is a regulator of rule-setting who doesn’t greatly accept the logic of the all-too-human scenarios he finds himself in – even beyond the courtroom. The logic strewn through exterior scenes of his friends, providing gambling advice and tradesmanship, seem more willingly appealing than sound or safeguarded.
Like any courtroom show, A Guilty Conscience plays lightly with the effect of those performing outside the emotional structure of goodness. The one who lives with regret, the one facing him, the one juror skeptical of a willing innocence – all factors in a play of one locked from the musical of many. Guilt rides not only alongside our one central person, but on the coattails of the actions we perform, the people we meet, the onlookers of our unimpeded recourse on this ground.
By third act, the trauma show becomes more intimate, casting Adrian in not just a brighter light, but truly any light at all. Once cast into the unknown, direct ties are frequently made to show Adrian’s evolution – making fun of someone’s diet, inhabiting those foods for purchase on a casual day years later. His interactions with every character evolves Adrian in chemistry & screen presence – not bigger, but with more studiousness (or lack thereof) for what they all represent, a holy-coming of justice in the form of moral understanding. Adrian’s legal colleague Evelyn (Renci Yeung) is named after British Marshall Evelyn Wood, and reflects her own set of conscious rules from the onset, paralleling the two in common routine.
A Guilty Conscience is a bit too long, stuffed with theatrical dramatics stepping into the doldrums of a real trial. It does not do a lot to tackle the greater wealth power implications it sets out beyond narrative fuel. What it does contain is an incredibly intriguing case, paced out with baffling levels of subtlety, that lead with utmost concentration to an obvious conclusion.
Adrian eventually learns to let the punches land, rather than speculate where they will go – taking control of his own destiny for once. What his future lacks in surprise or suspense, it makes up for in a message of fairness to the communal present, a treatise against the influential powers of wealth and resource that plays stage-like over a well-reason constitutional drama, emotional and gratifying all the same.
Seen at AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, Monterey Park
','' ); } ?>