Minority Report
SCI-Fi is not a genre often seen on stage, perhaps because of the visual and technical challenges involved in transporting audiences to a convincingly futuristic world. So credit must go to the whole team behind this adaptation of the Philip K Dick novella – made famous by the 2002 Spielberg film – for their ambition, though the result is solid rather than thrilling.
The premise is that the year is 2050 and the world is policed using the concept of ‘pre-crime’, whereby people’s brains are scanned to capture their intention to commit murder etc before going through with it.
Loosely adapting the source material, writer David Haig (best known as a comic actor) makes the lead character into a woman, Julia, CEO of the policing initiative and its most gleeful cheerleader.
Until, that is, midway through her conference speech that opens the show, when a printout tells her she is the next future killer set to be apprehended.
What follows is 80 minutes of pretty nifty action-adventure, as Julia
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tries to evade the authorities while being confronted with horrifying truths about the system she has created.
There is nothing particularly original here – the whole look of its rainy, urban dystopia is cribbed from the film Blade Runner, also based on a Dick story. But Jon Bausor’s set is impressively adaptable, and between the chases, fights and rides in driverless cars, it keeps you pretty gripped.
As for the script, the dialogue can be stilted and towards the end descends into shouty histrionics, but it does a decent job of dealing with the tale’s hefty themes about free will, justice and morality – and there are a few jokes to boot.
Frankly, it’s fun to see theatre attempting such high-octane, popcorn material every once in a while, even if this isn’t going to trouble the multiplexes.