By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

WHEN?: Saturday 20 April, opens 29 April and runs through 18 May 2024 RUNTIME: 90 minutes without interval

A Philip K Dick short story, a Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise and now a play re-imagined by a well-known British actor but does it already know it’s transferring to the West End after this run?

• Read on for reasons including how this is an adrenaline rush of visual spectacle and intellectual stimulation that is fully deserving of a West End transfer

Interviewed in the programme, author David Haig (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Old Vic) explains how he was given carte-blanche to go as off-piste as he wanted to and so he changed the sex of the protagonist and sets the action in Britain in 2050, the 10th anniversary of the introduction of Pre-Crime.

The action opens with the quite brilliant Jodie McNee’s Dame Julia Anderton in surgical gloves swinging a bucket containing a brain she brandishes Hamlet-style before her invited audience explaining it belonged to the 1st person convicted of intending to murder after a referendum in which Britain voted in favour of the insertion of chips in heads monitoring citizens’ thoughts.

Julia, whose name reminds us of 1984, is the CEO of the company behind Brit Pre-Crime which uses 3 ‘pre-cogs’ to verify the brain scans they analyse, is threatened by both a hostile US takeover and protest by those who oppose the infringements of civil liberties being perpetuated here.

Our heroine sees off a protester who walks through the audience to interrupt the action and then promises to reveal live the next person to be convicted of the pre-crime of murder but when her name is announced she goes rogue to prove her innocence even if that means undermining the credibility of the system she created in memory of her beloved twin’s unsolved murder.

It’s a whirlwind 10-minute set-up and what follows in the next 80-minutes is a very cinematic, real-time attempt by Julia to clear her name as she encounters the slimy politician Ralph, a believable Nicholas Rowe, behind her rise to success and the untrustworthy husband who has created the ‘pre-cog’ element of the programme that she’s not fully on top of.

Director Max Webster (Macbeth, Donmar Warehouse) is here reunited with the team behind the award-winning Life Of Pi and gives us a rollercoaster ride of action which has the look of a video game and reminded us of the stronger moments of Stranger Things: The First Shadow (Phoenix Theatre) while playing to a sci-fi crowd not usually so well served by theatre.

Before this 1st preview both Webster and Rachel O’Riordan, the venue’s artistic director, take to the stage to explain the complexity of the show and how 1 scene, involving a dramatic high-rise climb, will not be shown tonight because of rehearsal technical difficulties.

It is exactly this detail which makes 1st previews so fascinating to attend. Of course the show has already run in Nottingham before this transfer.

It’s brilliant adaptation is all the more prescient in a city where trust in police is at an all-time low and this whirlwind production is an adrenaline rush of visual spectacle and intellectual stimulation that is fully deserving of a West End transfer.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Lyric Theatre Hammersmith Tickets
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