“If the book loses, it will be destroyed—burned—hanged by the neck until it is dead.” So declared Morris Ernst, an ACLU lawyer and the attorney who defended James Joyce’s Ulysses—yes, the book itself—in an obscenity suit brought by the United States, in 1932. Banned in 1922, in both the U.S. and the U.K, for its descriptions of sexual acts, Ulysses became the centerpiece of a legal battle ultimately won by Random House and Ernst. That trial is the subject of Colin Murphy’s inventive courtroom drama, which resonates more urgently than ever. Conall Morrison directs. —Jeanne Malle