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Although theatre is generally pretty good at dystopias, it’s generally not a medium that tends to give good science-fiction.
Which makes the centrepiece of the Lyric Hammersmith’s 2024 season doubly intriguing. Most people will probably know ‘Minority Report’ from the smash 2002 Stephen Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise (pictured). It’s fair to say that the original 1956 novella by sci-fi godfather Philip K Dick – technically called ‘The Minority Report’ – is a bit less flying car chase-y than the movie. But it is, nonetheless, a cracking futuristic conspiracy thriller, set in a world in which crime has been all but eliminated thanks to ‘precogs’, mutants with an ability to see into the future whose reports enable the police to stop crime before they happen. But when John Anderton, the head of the police’s precrime division, finds himself fingered as a future murderer, he goes in the run to find out what the hell is happening.
The adaptation is by the veteran playwright and actor David Haig, with direction from Max Webster – whose presence suggests a fairly spectacular production given he did the honours for the West End’s stunning ‘Life of Pi’.
It’ll tour to the Nottingham Playhouse and Birmingham Rep in February and March before settling in for a longer run at the Lyric Hammersmith from April 19 to May 18. There it’ll form part of an exciting 2023 season that also includes the UK premiere of award-winning Australian pop musical ‘Fangirls’ (Jul 13-Aug 24), a revival of the great African American writer Alice Childress’s civil rights classic ‘Wedding Band’ (May 31-Jun 29), and ‘The Promise’ (Apr 30-May 11), a drama from deaf-led company Deafinitely Theatre about an elderly deaf woman’s experience of dementia and the care system.
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