We take a look at what critics have had to say about this stage adaptation of Philip K Dick’s sci-fi novella.
Broadway World: ** “But like a cartoon there are only two dimensions. At its best Minority Report feels like a video game, but someone else is playing it. Gormless fun for a while, but a beating emotional heart is noticeably absent.”
The Guardian: ** “At least the optics are there, in abundance. The set is a vortex of sound and light, full of kinetic energy as it shifts, lights up and yields futuristic cars, trains and AI holograms. Cityscapes bearing shades of Blade Runner (that other Dick story-turned-film) are projected on to the stage, and armed police officers look like figures out of The Matrix, although they are strangely inefficient at catching anyone.”
WhatsOnStage: *** “In fact, it stalks its own course, turning both into a rather English version of the tale, neither as propulsive as the film nor as morally challenging and bleak as the text. Despite a virtuoso production by Max Webster and his design team, which transforms a tiny stage into a richly realised vision of the near future, it never quite grips as drama.”
The Stage: *** “Fast-paced sci-fi about the power of the state lacks the fear factor.”
Time Out: “Although the many, many action setpieces in Max Webster’s production are accomplished, it’s hard to see the point in most of them. Much of the show’s terse 90-minute running time is taken up with stuff like characters breaking into a building through a high window, or a cab chase, or a character with vertigo crossing over a tiny aerial walkway. But none of it really adds to the story. For all the skill that’s gone into crafting these scenes there’s not the budget there to match the lavish theatricality of shows like ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ or ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, where the spectacle is so overwhelming it becomes the point.”
Evening Standard: *** “Haig is a superb character actor on stage and screen, from Our Country’s Good and Dead Funny to The Thin Blue Line and Killing Eve. This adaptation of Dick’s speculative fiction is a bold departure from the well-made, historical scripts he’s previously written. It’s fast and sporadically shrewd but too often requires not just the suspension, but the complete annihilation of disbelief.”
The Arts Desk: ** “It’s directed by Max Webster, whose set, lighting and video designers work their socks off to offer a beautifully rendered future, with echoes less of Spielberg than another Dick adaptation, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. But this isn’t a film. And Webster’s amped-up direction – reaching its nadir with some bizarrely choreographed chase scenes – simply overpowers a text that isn’t fit to purpose in the first place.”
London Theatre.co.uk: ** “Resembling a younger Lesley Manville, McNee has drive and determination to spare, even if one rarely warms to her or her plight, and Tanvi Virmani’s AI aide-de-camp, David, morphs impressively from a visual projection to actual person and back again. The show’s look as it stands now is its lucky charm, even if the majority report, I have a hunch, will focus on a script in need of a reboot.”
The Upcoming: *** “Although it makes you mull over the pervasive issues concerning our very own existence and society at large – and how, in the novelist’s world, Pre-Crime is clearly not infallible – this adaptation misses the mark, despite the visually stunning set pieces, and cool new-wave musical score, ultimately falling flat.”
The Telegraph: *** “The premise feels freshly pertinent as we become more reliant on AI, but this adaptation doesn’t live up to the Tom Cruise blockbuster.”
West End Best Friend: *** “This being said, the performers do the best they can to expand the material they are working with; Jodie McNee in particular providing the driving human force for the show. Her character’s intensity is impressive, selling the genuine threat she is under for the full run time. Other creative aspects of the play are valuable additions though; Nicola T. Chang’s score is excellent at defining the more dramatic moments of action, and Tal Rosner’s video design does excellent work bringing the show into its 2050 setting.”
Minority Report continues to play at the Lyric Hammersmith until the 18th May.