This ambitious co-production was always going to throw down the gauntlet for large-scale, special-effects theatre: how to adapt Philip K Dick’s fast-paced, futuristic crime thriller for the stage and distinguish it from the Hollywood sci-fi action film with Tom Cruise? If any director was qualified to give it a go, it was Max Webster, who made such a splash with Life of Pi.
This female-led version begins with a lecture by Dame Julia Anderton (Jodie McNee), creator of the pre-crime system, which lays out Dick’s philosophical and ethical arguments around free will. It is 2050 and state surveillance has been extended into the human brain, with a chip implanted into citizens to monitor transgressive thoughts. We follow Julia’s fugitive sleuthing when her own system identifies her as a future murderer and she goes on the run.
There is chutzpah in the endeavour but this is a strangely lifeless creation – a zombie hybrid of film and stage. David Haig’s script has an undercooked plot filled with anaemic twists, while both the action and pace need finessing.
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.
But this visual action exists in lieu of narrative propulsion. Some fight scenes are wooden and the tension so necessary for an action drama of this kind is lacking. You simply do not feel the jeopardy in it. The precogs are not nearly as creepily haunting as Samantha Morton’s vulnerable, wobbling film counterpart, nor drawn with any attention to detail.
The action itself seems too fast, with many moving elements on stage and the dialogue so hasty that sometimes it is hard to catch. McNee gives an efficient, almost Time Lord-like performance, but there is not much scope to the character, while her husband George (Nick Fletcher) remains a cypher. Their marital arguments take place on the move and seem tacked on.
Haig has clearly done his research, nonetheless. Dick’s twin sister, who died as a baby and was seen as something of a “phantom twin” in his work, can be seen in Julia’s murdered twin sister here whose death leads to the creation of her pre-crime system. Dick’s questions around determinism, civic freedom and the limits of machine thinking are here too, as is Anderton’s double-pull between saving her invention and seeing its failings exposed. But these ideas are not so much played out as talked out and none of it snags emotionally or contains enough dramatic impact.
A few quiet moments, such as the scene in which Julia recounts her sister’s murder, bring glimmers of depth. There are wry mentions of our world, including a Covid vaccine joke and a mention of a “retro” Apple watch along with some brief flecks of humour in the testy relationship between Julia and her AI voice companion, David (Tanvi Virmani), although the threat by Julia to strip David’s settings back to a basic Alexa or Siri model is repeated.
The production is ultimately overwhelmed by its own optics, the 3D set unmatched by its hollow 2D drama.
At Lyric Hammersmith, London, until 18 May
