Minority report
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
Verdict: Rent the movie
I had high hopes for David Haig’s stage adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1956 science fiction novel, The Minority Report.
Unfortunately, it’s more in line with Tim Vine’s great joke about crime in multi-storey car parks: it’s wrong on so many levels.
David Haig’s stage adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1956 science fiction novel, The Minority Report, follows a society that has developed brain chips to stop criminals before they act.
Max Webster’s production is a high-tech, low-budget melodrama that includes a car chase in a flimsy Smart car (pictured).
David Haig’s work is more in line with Tim Vine’s great joke about crime in multi-storey car parks: it is wrong on many levels
Most fundamentally incorrect, the story of a society that has developed brain chips to stop criminals before they act attempts to emulate the kinetic energy of the action film version of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 book, starring Tom Cruise.
Cruise’s character becomes Jodie McNee’s Julia, an executive director of the dystopian Pre-Crime Ministry who preaches an end to misogynistic violence and a new dawn of peace, calm, health and happiness.
But when technology turns against it, everything suddenly seems a lot less attractive.
Unfortunately, Max Webster’s production is a low-budget, high-tech melodrama that includes a car chase in a flimsy Smart car.
The car chases, alas, only work on stage as comedy, and while McNee vies to take Julia seriously, there are some unusually laughable performances amid dystopian clichés of endless rain, brollies, and Vangelis’ electronic music taken from Blade Runner.
You better rent the movie.
Devastating story of one mother’s fearless mission to expose the neglect scandal that led to her son’s death.
Laughing Boy, Jermyn Street Theater
Verdict: The power of love.
By Georgina Brown
Connor’s mother, Sara, calls her son LB, short for Laughing Boy, like in the Frans Hals painting. Also London buses, one of the many things his fun-loving daughter loved. The same goes for trucks.
I hated stores, loud noise and darkness. Sara Ryan, an Oxford academic, says she was “peculiar”. Autistic, epileptic, he saw things his own way. He can sometimes be a “handful”, but he is easy to love.
Notice the past tense. At 18, Connor left his special school, where he was safe and happy, and moved on to the next phase of “care”, an ATU (assessment and treatment unit) run by Southern Health.
It was never evaluated. He was “treated” with sedatives that left him stiff and emaciated.
Reports of his seizures were ignored. Locked in a bathroom while his supervisor ordered online purchases, he drowned.
Stephen Unwin’s clear, devastating dramatization of his mother’s published memoirs begins on that unforgettable scorching day in 2013.
So begins Sara’s tireless and fearless mission to expose the scandal of neglect and indifference towards vulnerable human beings that led to Connor’s wholly avoidable death while in the “care” of the NHS.
And seek justice for Connor. It culminates (and the irony is savage) with a disgusting and tense scene in which Sara herself is judged, accused of going to work instead of staying home with her son, judged “monstrous” for not establishing a relationship with her son. . the social worker.
Blurred images of children singing and a smiling little Connor are projected onto a curved white wall, like the end of a deep bath.
Connor himself is always present, superbly played by Alfie Friedman, intensely alive, caring, funny, playful, asking questions, making statements, and always ending with the word “mom.”
Their connection is extraordinary. It’s hard to take your eyes off Janie Dee as her doggedly determined mother, her searing pain held back, her fury and frustration spilling out of her.
Almost unbearable campaign theater, but essential.