Minority Report - Nottingham, Birmingham, Lyric Hammersmith

So… oof.

I struggle with the amount of criticism or more so what can feel unwarranted negativity around shows on here sometimes… and I’m fully framing this as it being an early preview and has only been performed three times so far…

The positives… it’s a one act 90 minute show. Which I love. I do wish there was more of this structure across the board! I love to be home and to bed for a reasonable time (yeah, I’m getting old!).
Some of the tech ideas are good here, projections etc. The story is interesting. It’s a nice difference from the movie.

Oof… there’s a lot of potential and neat ideas. But this didn’t feel like it should be in front of paying audiences yet. It did feel like a workshop of a first draft and first trial of their projections and tech. Things weren’t syncing up or working properly.
But for the story, it needed some wow moments if you’re going to try with tech. If you don’t have the budget for that, maybe do something more creative which I’d be here for. But a futuristic car that wobbles slightly side to side, projections supposed to evoke speed and travel but actually just feels slow and clunky. Clunky would be a word I’d use for the production as a whole. Transitions were awkwardly quiet because you stayed with characters who just weren’t doing anything.
There were some cool sets, coming up and down etc, but they felt wasted. Sometimes a huge ceiling piece would shift out the way and it felt like something was going to happen… and nothing. There were interesting acting choices, but I think it was more the material and direction that didn’t serve the cast, who then could only really ham some of it up. For a future sci fi story, it felt stuck in the past. I feel quite sad saying all of this, but I want it to be great, I want it to succeed. It needs so much work to develop it further. I remember seeing Ghost the musical (& others) that evoked travel / speed / movement, and it could take lessons from those. I wish it well and hope it has some time to breathe, settle, develop, but it’s the first time in a long long time I’ve been disappointed with something like this. I had a decent 90 minutes but felt very nonplussed by it.

Such great ideas and potential. It just doesn’t feel ready.

I was very excited to see it. I love the movie and was thrilled to see Sci-Fi on stage and, after seeing The Reps recent production of The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, I felt confident Birmingham Rep would do justice to good story-telling with a touch of dazzling tech.

Sadly, this is not the case and only reinforces the trope of 'sci-fi doesn't work on stage'.

Fundamentally, the show is a bag of ideas that never comes together as a cohesive whole. One minute it's high-brow SciFi, the next it's a loud and thrilling tech transition, followed by some physical theatre dance choreography leading into a serious piece of tense drama with a strange side-helping of humour. As a result, it's clumsy and underwhelming, like an A-Level drama piece with a million pound budget.

I think the fundamental mistake was too much focus on set and the tech at the expense of drama and performance.
The visual and sound effects were actually really good when they were subtle. But many of the set pieces, despite being quite imposing, were underwhelming (the sliding 'doors'), sometimes comical (the wobbling taxi/futuristic perspex bubble car), and often unecessary (the rooftop escape). Many scenes felt like they had been added purely as an excuse to use some cool tech and set pieces in a strange attempt to recreate Hollywood CGI.
It worked best when it was stripped back and more basic. The London Undergound was refreshingly low-tech yet still really sci-fi, the pre-cog chamber looked good too. I liked the brain scan projections even if the (more important) actual dialogue around them was rushed.

Which brings me onto the second point. The actual drama element of this was also disappointing. Most of this was due to the script, but some of it was just bad directing. For some reason (I assume an intentional attempt at naturalism - bizzare given the context), the actors rarely faced the audience. Most dialogue was delivered side-on or sometimes with their backs to us! It was difficult to see any facial expressions or to make any connection with the characters (especially the 'Home Secretary'). Because of the aformentioned set pieces, there was a lot of unconvincing high-tempo running about whilst pretending to be chased.

There were multiple scenes - usually involving the protagonist Julia Anderton - where some very dramatic event occours but the scenes are rushed and the opportunity for a more human element to the play completely lost. There was not enough time or space to allow the actress to explore these moments with the audience. If there had been, she needn't have bothered as most of these scenes were ruined by an irritating AI Hologram called 'David' (a female, go figure) who has a terrible habit of appearing during moments of distress only to offer some terrible comedy or sassy attitude.
Why the writers/directors decided the scene in which Julia, still in shock at having her own name spat out of the Goblet of Fire, would benefit from a humourous exchange where the 'David' suggests she could gouge out her own brain implant with a corkscrew. Which then happens! Only for the horror of the moment to be immediately overshadowed by a huge, distracting - and completely uncessary - set transformation so Julia can unconvincly pretend she is now 90-storeys up, balanced precariously on what the AI joyfully describes as a 'rickety bridge'.
Then there are the terrible jokes along the lines of "carry on like that David and I'll have you downgraded back to Alexa.. or worse, Siri" or the bizarre references to Apple Watches and how they are still cool in 2050 because they're retro.

All of these cheap, low-quality moments really do distract from an otherwise very promising script. If they had just focussed on the elements of the book/movie that make you think, I believe that would have been much more impactful than some slightly lame special effects.

You cannot help but admire the bravery of writer David Haig in attempting to adapt Speilberg's well-regarded 2002 movie for the stage. His solution is to simplify the plot massively, and also to swap the gender and occupation of the protagonist. Jodie McKee plays Julia, who is now a trailblazing company CEO (rather than a police task force chief).  She's barely off-stage. It's a tall order, and McKee pulls it off for the most part.

Haig has not the cinematic luxury of detailed plots and multiple characters, so instead focuses more on the philosophical question of free will and how much the human brain can be held accountable for its actions, with symmetrical opening and closing scenes featuring said brain to hammer home the message. The fantastical sci-fi framework -- as in the film -- where we are required to believe that future crimes can be foreseen, does not bear scrutiny, but if you suspend disbelief, it provides a neat device for exploring the ethics of a society where miscarriages of justice for the few are okay if it serves the greater good. And that has echoes today where we have people imprisoned for allegedly planning crimes rather than actually carrying them out. Psychiatric reports of the mental states of such people -- not dissimilar to the evidence supplied by pre-cogs in Minority Report -- are often key in securing convictions.

As a piece of theatre, Minority Report works surprisingly well, at least now it has settled in after a few weeks. Max Webster's direction is slick, and the set, lights and effects soundtrack convincingly conjure up a warped future reality. I nearly always resent the absence of an interval, but, for once, there was no place one would have fitted, and the 85 minutes rattled along at pace.

The addition of female David as a hologram android assistant was a clever device to assist plot exposition without feeling clumsy, but it was a mistake and unrealistic to imbue David with emotions of anger and frustration. David's appearances -- a mix of on-screen and in-person -- are nicely handled; the first in-person encounter is particularly good as it takes a few seconds to register that the actress is actually present on stage.

Another mistake is giving Julia some lines of corny comedy. I suspect Haig, with his background as a comic actor, could not help himself, but he should have shown restraint. The jokes -- references to Alexa/Siri and the umpteenth variant of Covid, for example -- fall flat and momentarily destroy the audiences willingness to root for the antihero.

The simplification of the plot also means that later developments are much easier to see coming than in the movie. Nevertheless, this Minority Report is engrossing and entertaining. If this were the West End, I would be rounding down my rating. But, I paid just £17.50 for a fantastic view in the middle of the second row, and the production is running on a provincial budget, and I felt properly entertained and thought-provoked, so I'm rounding up.

Four stars.

One act: 19:33-20:56

It's definitely worth seeing, I'm glad I went. It's just in the "good rather than great" category.

This is a poor man's theme park show ... with some cringe worthy special effects at times. The best one is the stage hand trying to hide behind the "living room curtains" to open and close the "automated" door :-)

The producers would have been better off going to see The Bourne Stuntacular in Orlando to see what technology can really do...

www.universalorlando.com/web/en/gb/things-to-do/shows/the-bourne-stuntacular

Enjoyed this very much last night. Presentation was very slick and very clever. Not sure about the characters. Perhaps it all went by too quickly for things be be developed properly.
Was very busy, which was pleasing to see.

Saw today's matinee, and as there's some amazing reviews above, which I agree with, I'll be briefer than I otherwise would be (you are spared lol):-

In Wizard of Oz terms, this has:-

(1) the courage to deliver some great courage -inducing action, with just the most incredible multi-functional set, which is more adaptable and ingenious than sets many times the budget;

(2) It's got a brain, as it has adapted Philip K Dick's short story usefully and thoughtfully;

(3) But unfortunately, the script doesn't have a heart, relying on the wonderful actor Jodie McNee to artificially inject emotions (she cries on cue) into all the frantic running about and deep conversations of the story.

Consequently, I agree that this falls into the good but not great category.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Amusingly, given the premise of Dick's story that there are three pre-cogs (humans with the data processing power of supercomputers), and that it takes two in agreement to create a "majority report" (a "reliable" prediction of future crimes), it is Dick's own original story that is the "minority report" here, as neither Spielberg nor Haig can stomach Dick's amoral proto-AI mind.

Both Spielberg and Haig adapt Dick into more moral humanistic versions of his story, obviously neither being at all comfortable with where Dick takes it, forming their own "majority" report that invalidates the Philip K Dick story.

On the other hand, like Dick, Haig fails to create any human relationships to care about, which leaves only the Spielberg film giving us the full Wizard of Oz experience of courageous action, head and heart. By making up a moving and developing relationship between Samantha Morton's lonely precog and Cruise's action-man Anderton, there's a deeply moving burgeoning human relationship at the heart of it that makes all the brains and courage matter.

But again, the set in this is great, the way it tilts and slides for action, provides nooks and crannies to breathe in, and opens up spaces magically and majestically for action. The story feels topically intelligent. And Jodie McNee does a mighty job of hiding the story's tin heart.

3 and a half stars from me.

It looked very high to me, but I was sat in the Circle.

Watched the film again last night, having seen the play on Monday and 100% preferred the play.