Sci-fi blockbuster Minority Report becomes seriously witty satire at Nottingham Playhouse

The answer, in the case of David Haig’s adaptation of Minority Report at Nottingham Playhouse, is “brilliantly.”

With nods to Steven Spielberg’s 2003 film, as well as the original novella by paranoid visionary Philip K. Dick, this world premiere combines witty satire and imaginative staging to create a compelling break-neck narrative.

In 2050, neuroscientist Dame Julia Anderton (Jodie McNee) is about to launch the next phase of her pioneering Pre-Crime programme, detaining people for crimes before they are committed.

But when Julia is accused of pre-murder, she’s in a race against time to save herself from her own system.

Haig, an award-winning stage and screen actor whose roles include Four Weddings and a Funeral, captures the off-beat humour that saturates Phillip K. Dick’s best work.

His adaptation tackles high concepts surrounding human nature, artificial intelligence and surveillance, asking the question: “Would you accept compulsory brain-chipping in return for a world free from violence?”

Of course there’s no such thing as a utopia in science fiction and Dame Julia is quickly plunged into a frenetic fight for survival which forces her to question the obsession driving her high-tech solution to the problem of human evil.

Any play which introduces its weighty themes while its protagonist removes a human brain from a bucket (“like Hamlet”), and sees someone beaten about the head with a phrenology bust will always get my vote.

A uniformly-engaging cast is never overshadowed by impressive visual effects which give the Tom Cruise extravaganza a run for their money – on a fraction of that blockbuster’s budget.

Tal Rosner’s video work, Jessica Hung Han Yan’s lighting design, and Jon Bausor’s production create a dance-floor spectacle of data server skyscrapers and penitential light grids forever closing in on the cornered thought criminals.

Movements director Lucy Hind and fight arranger Ruth Cooper-Brown deliver clever, cross-cutting choreography and powerful punch-ups.

Meanwhile illusions designer Richard Pinner springs a series of genuine surprises with the introduction of Tanvi Yirmani’s very funny Alexa-like AI assistant from nowhere.

Like Philip K. Dick himself, Julia Anderton is haunted by the death of their twin sister. Jodie McNee handles her fall from elite hunter to another member of the hunted herd with an agile, nervy grace.

While this adaptation doesn’t quite capture the brain-burned intensity of the original author’s Bizarro logic, it does succeed in conveying his slyly parodic approach to science fiction.

Dick never took that genre’s trappings seriously and neither does this version: Emile Carter’s superbly naff retro costumes recall a vision of the future that was already ridiculous in the 1970s.

Minority Report runs at Nottingham Playhouse until March 9 and then transfers to Birmingham Rep and Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. Visit the theatre’s website for more information.