Theatre review: Minority Report

I still have strong memories of the Lyric Hammersmith successfully translating science fiction to the stage with the striking Solaris a few years ago, so while it's a different creative team tackling Philip K. Dick, who inspired a number of the most successful sci-fi movies of all time, I was still optimistic that a venue willing to give the genre a chance would be a good choice to continue the experiment. Minority Report is quite a different proposition from the moody spookiness of Solaris, with the added challenges of a lot of action scenes, and Max Webster's production deals with them with varied - though mostly positive - results. But first, how to ensure future dystopia has the requisite dark cityscape of permanent rain? Adaptor David Haig has solved it by setting the story in London, so the view on stage isn't too different from the one out of the windows.

Theatre review: The Crown Jewels

I guess the summer holidays are silly season for more than just the news cycle; either that or with the post-pandemic economy still affecting the UK's stages, there really is no guessing what's going to end up on them next. At the Garrick that means The Crown Jewels, a play by Simon Nye - best known as a TV writer - about the real events of 1671 when a small gang led by Colonel Blood (Aidan McArdle) botched an attempt to steal the Crown Jewels which British monarchs wear at their coronations. To be honest this was a show I was more than a little dubious about, but booked for pretty much because of some of the cast. And at first the broader-than-broad performances of Sean Foley's production made me wonder if I'd make it past the interval. But while I can't say I grew to love it, it definitely helped once I'd made the connection "oh, it's a panto."