Minority Report review: Low-budget bid to recreate Tom Cruise’s action flick falls flat, writes PATRICK MARMION

Minority Report

Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith

Verdict: Rent the film

Score:

I had higher hopes for David Haig’s stage adaptation of Philip K Dick’s 1956 sci-fi novel, The Minority Report. 

Alas, it is a lot more in line with Tim Vine’s great gag about crime in multi-storey car parks: it really is wrong on so numerous concentrations.

Most basically completely wrong, the tale of a culture that’s created mind chips to end criminals in advance of they act, tries to emulate the kinetic strength of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 motion movie model of the e-book, starring Tom Cruise.

The Cruise character will become Jodie McNee’s Julia, a soundbite -spouting CEO of the dystopian Ministry of Pre-Crime preaching an stop to misogynistic violence and a new dawn of peace, tranquil, well being and happiness. 

But when the technologies turns on her, it abruptly appears to be like a great deal less awesome.

Regrettably Max Webster’s generation is a low-spending plan, higher-tech melodrama that incorporates a toe-curling automobile chase in a flimsy Good motor vehicle. 

Motor vehicle chases, alas, only work on stage as comedy and while McNee vies to acquire Julia very seriously, there is some unusually risible acting amid dystopian clichés of interminable rain, brollies and electronic Vangelis music culled from Blade Runner. 

You might be far better off renting the film.

Devastating tale of a mother’s fearless mission to expose the scandal of neglect that led to her son’s demise

Laughing Boy, Jermyn Road Theatre 

Verdict: The ability of love

Score:

By Georgina Brown

Connor’s mum, Sara, phone calls her son LB, shorter for Laughing Boy, like the Frans Hals painting. Also London Buses, just one of quite a few issues her exciting, humorous little one beloved. Ditto lorries. 

He hated retailers, loud noise and darkness. Sara Ryan, an Oxford tutorial, states he was ‘quirky’. Autistic, epileptic, he saw items in his very own way. He could be a ‘handful’ occasionally, but effortless to like.

Observe the previous tense. Aged 18, Connor left his distinctive college, the place he was protected and pleased, and moved into the next stage of ‘care’, an ATU (assessment and procedure unit) run by Southern Well being. 

He was in no way assessed. He was ‘treated’ with sedatives which remaining him punctured, haggard. 

Reviews of his seizures have been overlooked. Locked in a bathroom, when his supervisor purchased groceries on the net, he drowned.

Stephen Unwin’s distinct, devastating dramatisation of his mother’s released memoir begins on that unforgettable scorching day in 2013.

So commences Sara’s tireless, fearless mission to expose the scandal of neglect and indifference towards susceptible human beings which lead to Connor’s entirely preventable death while under NHS ‘care’. 

And to find justice for Connor. It culminates – and the irony is savage – with a sickening, tense scene in which Sara herself is put on demo, accused of likely to function somewhat than being at property with her son, judged ‘monstrous’ for failing to construct a rapport with his circumstance-employee.

Blurry pictures of little ones singing, of a smiling tiny Connor are projected on a curved white wall – like the conclude of a deep bath. 

Connor himself is at any time-existing, superbly performed by Alfie Friedman, intensely alive, affectionate, amused, amusing, asking issues, earning statements, constantly ending in the word ‘Mum’. 

Their relationship is extraordinary. It is difficult to acquire your eyes off Janie Dee as his doggedly decided mother, her searing grief contained, her fury and stress spilling about. 

Just about unbearable, but essential campaigning theatre.