Minority Report: the Spielberg sci-fi thriller comes to the stage – and it’s as confusing as ever
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The dystopian fiction of US sci-fi visionary Philip K Dick (1928-1982) has afforded a treasure-trove of ideas-rich, adrenal storylines that Hollywood directors and screen-writers have seized on, often to commercially successful and cultural discourse-defining effect.
Whether it’s Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau or – as seen on Amazon – The Man in the High Castle, the thrill of Dick’s legacy is the way he gets inside human behaviour, picks apart the wiring of societies, and considers alternate realities – repeatedly floating what might unfold, too, with eerie prescience.
That’s especially the case with his 1956 short-story The Minority Report, which plotted the possibility of pre-emptive ‘justice’, where criminal impulses are detected by the state and nipped in the bud by heinous incarceration, a variant of Orwell’s thought-crime; Steven Spielberg made it the biggest PKD blockbuster success so far in his 2002 film starring Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton.
The actor and writer David Haig has grabbed the opportunity to bring the tale to the stage for the first time with director Max Webster (The Life of Pi). The premise feels freshly pertinent – this year, it was reported that AI systems were being used to detect criminal activity on the London Underground. And with algorithms anticipating our consumer needs, even though Haig sets the piece in 2050, it feels as though we’re already nearly there.
The differences from the film are manifold. It’s set in the UK not the States, and the proselytiser for the evolving ‘pre-crime’ system isn’t police chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise in the film) but neuroscientist Julia (an initially cool, nonchalant Jodie McNee), whose boffin husband George has constructed the techno-authoritarian edifice. The evening opens with Julia telling us how it works, her passion for a crime-free society in which everyone’s brain is scanned via an embedded chip every 60 seconds rooted in her sister’s tragic, unsolved murder. But suddenly she herself is marked as a pre-criminal.
Some of the evening’s interest lies in the inevitable game of compare and contrast. The writhing trio of clairvoyant ‘pre-cogs’, so prominent on screen, are here relegated to a grand but still rather underwhelming ‘reveal’. Webster’s production does however achieve mission impossible in generating suspenseful jeopardy: with pulsing lighting, bustling choreography, a throbbing soundscape and a shifting metallic, grid-like set conjuring futuristic exteriors and interiors in which the walls can literally be closing in.
Some of Haig’s innovations have a nice satirical touch – Anderton’s virtual assistant (Tanvi Virmani) is a shimmering know-it-all. But while questions of free will and the relation between love and hate are probed in passing, and his adaptation is admirably succinct, the political and psychological dimensions of the piece, hurtling by in 90 minutes, feel too sketchy. It’s finally hard to credit anyone’s faith in a system so intrinsically nefarious, and Haig may have missed a trick in exploring the overlap between judicial suspicion and cancel culture. With an ending that feels too abrupt, there’s more work to be done. But in its most exhilarating moments, with search-lights criss-crossing the auditorium, you get a reminder that theatre can, and should, be exciting – and an inkling too of its tech-assisted future.
Until May 18. Tickets: 020 8741 6850; lyric.co.uk
